Okay, it’s true: every installment in the “Who can benefit from using an editor?” series emphasizes how an editor can help you reach your readers. The “Writing is Thinking” approach is tailored for writers who care about reaching their readers and who recognize that it takes extra work to do so.
But there are two common varieties of scholarly writers who are especially interested in their audiences.
The Public Scholar
The public scholar works hard to adapt their research and knowledge for a public audience.
Maybe you’re writing for Aeon or Public Books. Maybe you hope to provide a guest column for a news outlet or be interviewed in a podcast. Maybe you want to connect more powerfully with undergraduate students or finesse the tweetable version of your research. These public outreach projects are uniquely challenging and uniquely rewarding.
An editor is the most careful reader you will ever have, and an editor can represent your target audience. An editor spends a lot of time with your writing, so future readers don’t have to: so those readers can grasp your central ideas and enjoy reading your prose at the first encounter. An editor is the reader who does not have your expertise and helps you translate expertise. They can help you present ideas in a logical order to someone who is not familiar with your field. They can help you determine how much defining to do and whether your examples are clear. They can help you shake off the academic habit of using multisyllable words where simple ones will do—they can help you discern where simplicity is possible and complexity is necessary. Editors allow you to test your writing with a sample reader. Using an editor allows you to make adjustments to your writing before it goes public—to ensure it lands with the readers you hope to reach. (The public scholar is closely related to the intellectual in the weeds, but the public scholar may be more concerned with their intended audience.)
Every reader is always two readers.
Vernlyn Klinkenborg, several short sentences about writing, pg 65-66
One reads with a deep, intuitive feel for the way language works
And yet with overwhelming literalness…
This reader will always stumble over your errors.
If a sentence offers an ambiguous path-two ways of being read-this reader will always take the wrong one.
The other reader-literate, curious, adaptable, intelligent, open-minded-
Will follow you anywhere you want to go
As long as your prose is clear…Every reader is both of these readers in one.
Write for both together.
The Hopeful Candidate
Another type of writer who is audience-aware is the hopeful candidate—scholars hoping to reach the highest-stakes audiences: journal reviewers, hiring committees, admission committees, deans and colleagues.
These audiences are not as different from the general public we might imagine. Even when you are writing to colleagues in your specialty, it is may have been a while since they have read your sources. They are busy scholars themselves managing many commitments, and you can’t count on them to always bring undivided attention and close-reading energy to your writing.
The highest-stakes audiences are typically not the people in your specialty, even when they are scholars in your subject. Spending extra effort to tailor your writing for your reader can pay off. Hiring committees and journal reviewers read stacks of materials full of clunky academic sentences. Clear writing can help your work stand out from the pile.
The hopeful candidate understands that every detail of their writing matters. An editor can help with the details—from each comma placement to every verb in an abstract. When so much depends on your writing, hiring an editor is an investment in your success.
That’s how we need to read, as writers—
verlyn klinkenborg, several short sentences about writing, pg 36
Paying attention to the decisions embedded in each sentence,
Decisions visible in the structure of the sentence itself.
What you write—what you send out into the world to be read—
Is the residue of the choices and decisions you make.
Choices and decisions you are responsible for.