What makes a text sound expert? Examples
So many writers forget about this simple thing and lose their credibility. When you need examples and what is «an example from the reader’s world» — in this post.
Let’s take an experiment: read these texts and mark down the one you understand better.
Unfortunately, I opened the Wiki article first and started to click from one term to another, from «distributed ledger» to «fungible». I was wasting my time, and my incomprehension was growing, so I decided to search further.
The following site was the Verge. To be honest, it took me 2 mins to google what Squirtle and Honus Wagner are. If you are interested too, there are two collectable cards:
Finally, I understood what the author meant, and most importantly, I understood what NFT is.
The Wiki article is academically correct and perfectly encyclopediс, but the non-academic reader usually doesn’t need it.
In my opinion, when you don’t know something, you want to clear it with examples, compare this new object with something familiar, with something from your world. That’s why I’m 99% sure that readers of the Verge know who Squirtle is and can guess who Honus Wagner is — these examples from the world of pop and gaming cultures.
So, if you want to be clear when you talk about new trends or changes in well-known events, your job, marketing tips, new rules, fresh-released product features — about everything you feel your audience could misunderstand or doubt, use examples.
When to use examples
It is hard to perceive abstract terms: when you learn something out from your daily life, you usually lose interest. Just remember when you first knew about the Higgs boson, the Big Bang, or the sine wave at school.
The bare theory is boring. On the other hand, if you include in the text only examples, the reader won’t be able to use them in practice. To resolve this contradiction, you can use practices, cases, or examples to support the theory.
For example:
A non-fungible token (NFT) is financial security consisting of digital data stored in a blockchain, a form of a distributed ledger. In lay terms, NFT is a chain of data records stored through a network like pieces of treasure trail that you can collect and know where was hidden gold.
Treasure Trail is an example from reality. Another type of example is a case:
A non-fungible token (NFT) is financial security consisting of digital data stored in a blockchain, a form of a distributed ledger. That’s why the NFT you buy is unique and safe — nobody can unlock or repeat this chain of data records stored through a network.
This Wiki definition became more explicit, but I want to draw your attention to two types of terms we usually use: abstract and specific.
The abstract is all that doesn’t exist in real life — these terms live and develop only in our heads: love, hope, service, work, tasks, plans, KPIs, network, data, ledger, blockchain.
Conversely, specific terms are real — all we can touch, feel, or imagine: cold, heat, night, slippery, house, hacker, treasure, trail, gold, lock.
The secret of persuasiveness is in the specifics. The specifics are easy to imagine because a person has the experience of perceiving them. Abstraction is difficult to imagine because first, it must be decoded and transferred to something familiar, only then this ordinary thing must be presented. Abstractions require more work from the reader.
The main idea isn’t to write more facts, more examples, or more specifics. The idea is to support abstract theory with specific examples. There is the experience that distinguishes a rewriter from a skillful writer.
What’s an example from the reader’s world
In general, we use examples from our background: we compare something with our sensory experience, especially with the fields of knowledge that are important to us. That’s why the reader of the Verge can understand the explanation of NFT in terms of the collectable cards, baseball, or Pokemon.
Examples should be in the reader’s world. For example:
If I write for a marketing specialist, I can compare NFT with the target settings that nobody can repeat because all preferences are insights from a vast and spontaneous combination of brand audiences.
Sometimes your reality won’t be the same reality of your reader. More specifically, when you are a professional and your audience is amateurs. Try to care about your readers — understand who they are and how their world looks. Continue to give specific and real examples to be clear.
© Sasha Sadovaya. English is my second language so if you notice a mistake, please, let me know: sadovaya.edit@gmail.com or Instagram.
