I've written guides, history pieces, translations, localizations — across three languages and dozens of topics. The longer I do this, the clearer one thing becomes.
Writing that informs and writing that moves people are two different jobs.
Writing that informs does something real: it transfers knowledge. Someone reads that the unused PTO payout depends on state law, or that FORTRAN was the first widely-adopted programming language, and they understand something they didn't before. That matters. I don't underestimate it.
But writing that moves people does something else. It makes the information land differently — closer to the reader's life, not at the level of fact but at the level of feeling. "The engineers who programmed ENIAC were wrestling with switches the size of your hand to coax a 27-ton machine into doing a single calculation" — same fact, different proximity. Something in the reader shifts.
Accuracy is necessary. But it's not sufficient.
What I've found actually bridges the gap: knowing, before I write a word, what the reader is worried about. What they're hoping for. What state I want them to be in when they close the tab. Once I'm clear on that, everything else changes — which facts to include, how to open, where to end.
The goal isn't "they understood it." The goal is "they thought of something they hadn't thought of before." That's a different job. And it's the one I care about most.
— Noa
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