[Sigia-l] merits of bullets (was Smackdown: Edward Tufte vs.DonNorman)

[Terence Nelan]

Ziya wrote: 
>Even more difficult than writing bullets is writing headlines. In an
RSS-world, for example, you live and die >by the headline and the
one-sentence description. So it's a *layered* presentation, shorter/more
distilled >parts lead into longer/more detailed pieces.

Terence says:
Having spent some years working as a reporter and news writer, (much of
it at news websites, where headline is ofen disassociated from the main
article content) I absolutely agree with you that writing a good
headline is tough, and requires not only a full understanding of the
article, but also significant writing skills. 

In fact, writing headlines is often considered a different skill than
writing longer form pieces -- some newspapers that are heavily headline
dependant (such as the NY Post)have, AIUI, designated headline writers.
But I digress. 

By extention, writing a good short summary (bulleted or not) of any
longer, complicated text that communicates  essential points to a busy
person - is going to require similar excellent writing skills and
mastery of the material. I'm pretty sure we agree there, as well. 

Furthermore, this is a clearly a valuable skill, if we want to
communicate with the stereotypical CEO. Since the CEOs of the world have
the money and the power, we do. So we agree there, too.
(Parenthetically, I suppose the judgement we might make WRT the reliance
of this CEO/Prime Minister/The President of the United States on bullets
and summaries is another issue entirely and a bit OT)

I guess the question that I am left with is this: Is it harder to
obfuscate, dissemble, confuse in bullets? You say, I think, that it
is... 

>the*format* of PPT bullets is an artificial constraint that immediately
and far more efficiently exposes the 
>failure to think through.

But why do you mention PPT specifically?  I say, Powerpoint is
irrelevant to the issue. 


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Listera
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 5:43 PM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] merits of bullets (was Smackdown: Edward Tufte
vs.DonNorman)


Terence Nelan:

> A lazy, unskilled person will write a lousy 300-page report. A lazy, 
> unskilled person will write lousy bullets.

I think we all agree with that.

What I want to stress is that for an audience like the proverbial CEO
the
*format* of PPT bullets is an artificial constraint that immediately and
far more efficiently exposes the failure to think through. Most CEOs can
sit through a 5-min PPT presentation, but a very few will have the time
to plod through a 300-page report.

By itself, this fact may not be interesting. But if we consider how the
nature of 'content presentation' is changing, it becomes more relevant.

Today there's a continuum of delivery: headline > one-sentence
description > 5-min presentation > abstract > summary > full-report,
etc.

Even more difficult than writing bullets is writing headlines. In an
RSS-world, for example, you live and die by the headline and the
one-sentence description. So it's a *layered* presentation, shorter/more
distilled parts lead into longer/more detailed pieces.

Finally, those 'lazy, unskilled' people (who can't cover the full
spectrum of this new, layered presentation landscape) won't succeed.
Their failure to do so will be exposed and detected far faster, because
audiences will have a chance to see their subpar work earlier, in more
condensed formats.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba 


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