Writing

What does “Trust science” mean for writers?

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged science writing on by

Writing about science is hard. To start with, it’s complicated. Scientists deal in concepts which most people outside their field don’t understand. Most of us have no more than a vague idea of what a boson is (my spell checker doesn’t even recognize the word) or what the difference is between a brontosaurus and an apatosaurus (they’re the same beast).

An even bigger complication is the way science works. Scientists accumulate information, form hypotheses, and try to find out if their hypotheses explain the data. If they do, hypotheses build up into a theory. The term “theory” doesn’t mean a tentative guess, as it does in ordinary speech; it means a set of ideas which is the best explanation available.
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Do brown cows dream of chocolate milk?

This entry was posted in Writer ethics Writing and tagged chocolate journalism milk polls on by

Last week I saw a YouTube video purporting to show how dumb the masses are. It cited a poll which allegedly found that 7% of Americans surveyed think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It’s unlikely, if you think about it, that any significant number of people hold this belief, but it makes viewers feel good to think they’re smarter than others.

A search revealed that lots of sites uncritically reported this result. In fact, when I searched for a stock brown-cow image to stick on this post, many of the results referenced the poll. On the bright side, I found an article that looked carefully at the poll. Just now I found a Columbia Journalism Review article demolishing the claimed result.
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Language shifts: “Social engineering”

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged etymology language social engineering on by

This was going to be an article on how writers on computer security misuse the term “social engineering.” However, my research quickly showed that the tech usage has almost completely displaced the original meaning. When that happens, it’s useless to say it’s wrong.

An example of the original usage can be found on encyclopedia.com under “Large Scale Social Engineering”:
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Book Discussion: Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged Antifa books politics on by

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Antifa’s attempt to intimidate a bookstore gave a significant sales boost to Andy Ngo’s Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. I probably wouldn’t have bought the book if it weren’t for that. If I’d seen it on a bookstore shelf, I would have noticed the endorsements by Tucker Carlson on the front and back covers and skipped over it.

It’s a book that I have to treat with caution. It’s hard to find any trustworthy information about Antifa, which isn’t a formal organization at the national level. Mainstream news seems to lie more about Antifa than about any other person or organization, claiming it’s an “anti-fascist” group. Every time I hear reliable reports about it, it’s trying to suppress the speech of others by tactics ranging from shouting down speakers to assault. That’s more fascist than anti-fascist. But just a few pages into the book, I started seeing indications that I should be cautious with Ngo too.

At the same time, I can’t dismiss him just because I disagree with some of his conclusions. I need to look at whether his research is reliable, he’s presenting all the important facts, he’s not using misleading words, he isn’t overestimating the movement’s importance, etc. He’s been the target of threats and physical assaults for his work on Antifa, and it’s hard for anyone to stay objective under such pressure.
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Links, URLs, and embeds

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged HTML writing on by

It surprises me how many writers don’t understand how links work. Here’s a brief guide on some technical (but not too technical) points.

The structure of a URL

Understanding HTML isn’t essential to writing an article. Usually you work in an editor that takes care of those details. But you can’t get around understanding links. A link uses a uniform resource locator or URL. Here’s what it looks like:

https://www.example.com/path/file

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