We write because we have something to say, something to sing, a poem, a story, an item of news, a mathematical formula with predictive power, a theory of how the universe works, that we want to share with others. We feel an irresistible compulsion to share our thoughts, our ideas, with other people.
By 'we' I mean all humans, everyone, but especially those of us who believe we have something worthwhile, important, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, that we are impelled to share with others. 'Others' vary in number from our nearest and dearest to all of humankind.
We began doing this before writing was invented. Balladeers, story-tellers, wandering minstrels, tribal elders and sooth-sayers were talking to the rest of their tribe or clan millennia ago, singing songs, telling stories, relaying the history of their people. Homer, the blind poet, sang the story of the siege of Troy which probably mixed a historical record of real events that happened to real people with the magic and myths of interventions by the gods. The Iliad, Homer's tale of the siege of Troy, of Achilles, Agamemnon, Helen and Paris, Priam, Hector, Odysseus, the rest of the heroic band of Greeks and Trojans and the Olympian gods and goddesses, dates back, we believe, to long before those who told the tale had written records. It was passed on orally, perhaps for centuries before it was written down, and preserved in perpetuity as one of the greatest of all timeless classics.
I discovered that I had worthwhile things to say to my professional peers and students aspiring to join our ranks, possessed the ability to express these in language others enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing them down. I could summarize and condense complex concepts into simple generalizable principles. In 1977 I started work as editor in chief of a massive comprehensive reference textbook of public health and preventive medicine. When it was published in 1980, that book had 1926 pages, plus 25 pages of 'front matter' - title page, table of contents, preface, list of contributors and their affiliations. The book attracted praise from many quarters. The praise I appreciated most was for the introductory chapter in which I pulled it all together, summarized the complex and occasionally confusing 'big picture' in an overview devoid of technical jargon, 6 pages a grade school child could understand, about the scope, aims, methods and scientific basis of public health. Here is a sample:
"The ways to preserve and improve health are discussed at length in later chapters. In summary, the methods are to keep the environment safe, to enhance immunity to infections, to behave healthfully, to eat wisely and well, to have well-born children, and to care prudently for the sick."
Whether I'm writing about tangible things or abstract concepts it's important that I, the writer, and all my readers, give the same meaning to every word in the text. There is no place for Humpty-Dumpty in my kind of writing. Remember what Humpty-Dumpty said to Alice: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." That's not to say I reject ambiguity always and forever. Even in the Dictionary of Epidemiology - a dictionary, forsooth - my editorial team and I felt obliged to leave a little wiggle room, a little uncertainty, or two alternative meanings, for an occasional technical term. We also had to recognize that the same technical word or phrase could occasionally mean something entirely different in two (or more) unrelated scientific domains in which its use had evolved independently. But that's a rather arcane discussion for another time and place, not for this post on this blog.
In this post I'm discussing my own writing, and it would be easy to get carried away, to run on for far longer than the most patient reader would wish. Time to quit while I'm ahead.
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