Abstract

In practice, a writer serves as part of a communications system and must thoroughly understand the operation of the system if he is to produce effective writing. He must provide a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio for his readers by controlling semantic noise as well as mechanical noise. He must anticipate that psychological noise will arise if he does not eliminate ambiguity, vagueness, and outright meaningless phraseology. He must resist the temptation to sound “professional” and concentrate on satisfying his readers' needs.