The gulf between correctness and understanding

The traditional preoccupation with “correctness” and “clarity” in technical writing frequently goes hand in hand with a neglect of the reader's point of view which results in publications of such poor quality that instead of admiring them we should consider them unacceptable. Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance includes an exploration of this problem and a reexamination of the relationship between “objectivity” and quality.