Sometimes, even the most incredible messages do not come across. Inspiring, revolutionary and potentially world-changing ideas have been discarded or brushed off.
It may seem that it is the idea itself that has been rejected. In reality, the problem can lie in how the message was delivered.
Communicating the right message to a recipient, whether a reader or a listener, requires more than words and grammar. It also requires value. Words and grammar are part of the toolkit that allows us to construct a message correctly. Value is more subjective: it determines what the recipient can take from that message.
Making information valuable does not mean generalising it or making it easier. In writing, value is commonly approached through the question: Why should I care? But there is a more useful question: Why should the reader care? If the reader is the recipient, the value of the information has to be established from their perspective.
This is where communication becomes difficult. What the sender considers important may not be what keeps the recipient listening. The information therefore needs to provide enough value for the recipient to stay “online” long enough to understand the message.
That does not mean that the sender's priorities are wrong. Quite the opposite: their arguments may be important and entirely valid. There is no simple competition between the sender's and recipient's perspectives, nor a universal hierarchy of information. The challenge is to understand which information provides an entry point for this particular recipient, in this particular context.
Consider a doctor explaining an expensive treatment to a patient: The doctor may begin with the treatment method itself, its technical advantages and its cost. All of this information can be important. But if the patient is still wondering what the treatment could actually do for them, they may stop listening before the doctor reaches the part that gives the information meaning.
The same problem can occur in scientific communication. A researcher may enthusiastically describe the latest improvements to a detector, yet never explain what those improvements will allow scientists to measure or understand that they could not before. To the researcher, the technical development may itself be exciting. To the reader, its value may only become apparent once it is connected to the scientific question it helps answer.
Good writing and editing help make that value visible. They connect what the sender considers important with what the recipient needs to understand, without compromising the information itself.
