: Re: Is it okay to call the reader's target audience stupid? I'm a tech genre author, and have already published one book on Android development. However, this book was focused more on the developer

@Shanna875

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Please write in whatever style is necessary to get the information across in a memorable way.

Please write in a way that makes the reader actually smarter, even if it makes you sound a little silly rather "intelligent" or "professional".
( a, b )

Some of my favorite authors occasionally call users "stupid" ( c ).

My users generally are pre-occupied with something else, or are stressed by time pressures, or have not yet learned or have forgotten what I think are some of the niftiest parts of my application.

It's quite all right to remind me that every user has occasional mental glitches, and it's my responsibility to make sure such momentary awkwardness doesn't lead to something horrible, like erasing a hard drive or leaking a credit-card number to the bad guys.

It's also quite all right to remind me that all humans can keep only a finite number of things in their heads at any one time, so I need to design a system that works even when my users are unable to give it their full attention.

On the other hand, if you tell me I can blame the mistakes my users make entirely on those users, and it's OK to do nothing to help them, you are doing them and me a disservice.

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