Word Wraps

I am at the ACS meeting in Washington DC, here officially as "press" rather than as a chemist. It's a very different way to see the meeting. I went to a press briefing this morning (on something crossing chemistry and theology, no less). The press center is tucked away next to the registration area, and has everything a writer might want: food, wireless access and a steady stream of caffeine and conversation.

Listening as a scientist to a talk, and as a writer to a briefing turn out to be slightly different experiences. Both require critical listening, but listening as a writer prompts me to think far more about the words the science is coming wrapped in. The shorthand scientists use sounds almost staccato in this context. "Measles naive" instead of "never exposed to the measles virus" or "no evidence of viremia" instead of "no measurable virus in the bloodstream". As one of my teachers at a science writing workshop suggested, one goal for a science writer is to slow it down.

We try to be both precise and concise, but I wonder how often the combination in giving a talk, or even reading a paper in the literature leads to attentional processing deficits? An interesting experiment in attentional processing is to present subjects with a rapidly changing sequences of letter, interspersed with numbers. If two numbers are placed too close together, subjects can "miss" the second letter while their brain is busy processing the first. (Experienced meditatators are better at this task than those who don't practice being "attentive".) Pack too much into a sentence, and your subjects or audience might miss bits.