Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences. by Laurel RichardsonReview by: T. B. VaughanJournal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series D (The Statistician), Vol. 40, No. 4 (1991), pp.466-467Published by: Wiley for the Royal Statistical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2348755 .

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466 Book Reviews

Envisioning Information EWARD R. TUFTE, 1990 Godalming, Graphics Press UK 121 pp. + 5 pp. index, ?30.00

The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?

The opening paragraph of Tufte's introduction both summarizes the content of this book and gives a feel for the style. This volume carries on from his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Like that book, it is well produced, lavishly illustrated and visually attractive. It is a book that appeals and fascinates at first glance.

And at second glance? Well, Envisioning Information has a far wider scope than Quantitative Information, and from that point of view has less of immediate relevance to the practical statistician. It is also a more theoretical treatment, and contains more examples than discussion. In many places I wanted Tufte to tell me more about the technical details that he understood had gone into producing the graphic he was commending. I was especially frustrated by the shortness of the treatment of colour and shading. The book would admirably support a lecture course.

The examples, however, are many and varied, two or three on most pages. They are taken from science, art, design and everyday life. There are photographs in true and false colours, maps, perspective drawings, technical plans, graphs, tables, even geometric proofs, dance notations, pure art and caligraphy. The most overtly statistical is a 'bar chart' formed by drawing maps of the world's rivers side by side. The chapter of 'small multiples' contains ideas most readily incorporated into statistical common practice.

I would recommend anyone who has to present results to look at The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. If the ideas in that book excite you, then Envisioning Information will provide a further rich source of ideas and stimulation. Alternatively, just leave it lying about to impress visitors.

R. A. REESE University of Hull, UK

Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences LAUREL RICHARDSON, 1990 London, Sage 71 pp., ?5.25 ISBN 0 8039 3521 8

The author is Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University and this slim monograph is no. 21 in the Sage Qualitative Research Methods Series. It is by a social scientist for social scientists and addresses practical 'writerly problems' as well as the theory of writing. While the aims are not stated explicitly, it seems intended to help social scientists in writing both academic and non-academic texts.

The writer distinguishes 'literature' from scientific writing. Literature is aligned with art and culture and contains values of taste, aesthetics, ethics, humanity and morality and the right to metaphoric and ambiguous language. On the other hand, scientific writing uses words that are objective, precise, unambiguous, non-contextual and non-metaphoric.

The monograph is in two parts: Theoretical Issues (26 pp.) and Practical Solutions (30 pp.). The first part coirsists of five sections called Contemporary Writing Issues, Science Writing, Literary Devices in Social Science Writing, Narrative and Authority and Authorship. The second part contains sections on Discovering a Collective Story, Writing a Trade Book, Writing Academic Papers and Writing for Mass Circulation.

It was of interest to the reviewer to discover what benefit a discourse on the art of writing by a social scientist could have for a scientist from the more conventional scientific disciplines, and for those concerned with numeracy and statistics in particular. To that end, attention was focused on those sections which promised to have some relevance for the statistician. This reviewer unfortunately has difficulty in coping with the opaque jargon which seems inseparable from much social science writing and this monograph is no exception. It was something of a revelation to be told

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Book Reviews 467

that two important tropes in scientific writing are the synecdoche and the metaphor and that 'both convey the credibility of the work in its cognitive content'. In the discussion on metaphors we learn that

In the ecological-demographic world, which has increasing currency in sociology, the family is defined as a cluster of persons in relationship to a marker; populations are a set of individuals in an interdependent system of functions.

Later, we also learn that, 'Production of outputs is based on ingredients calied inputs. Academic encoding

... is accomplished through a prominent display of academic credentials of the author, references, footnotes, methodology sections, use of academic metaphors and images (such as "exchange theory", and "stratification") and book blurbs and prefactory material about the science or scholarship involved.

Statisticians may like to know that descriptive statistics 'like percentages and frequency tables' are known as 'baby stats'.

In the practical sections all the examples are taken from the author's book on the relationships between single women and married men.

I cannot recommend this monograph to any other than a social science audience; they will possibly appreciate its convoluted and turgid prose. There are plenty of other texts concerned with technical writing which are vastly superior that scientists can use to improve their prose style, if so minded.

T. B. VAUGHAN Independent Consultant

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