[Interest] my comparison with company reports

[Mark Griffith]

.

Dear R. Reucher, 

thanks for your response about company reports - actually that's not quite true. I'm not an economist telling you they are clear. I'm an economist telling you we expect them to be clear, and even though most of them are unclear there is general agreement they should and could rise to a higher level of comprehensibility. I never said they were clear already. But people are at least trying, and not saying they should be for initiates only. 

There are two battles here. (1) Everyone agreeing that clarity for intelligent general readers can be achieved and that this is a shared goal, and (2) actually achieving this indisputably difficult goal. 

What I should have said - my apologies for being unclear there - is that goal (1) has been achieved with company reports by and large. No-one in business (at least out loud) defends the proposition that company reports should only ever be read by people with economics or accountancy training - there is at least lip service paid to the idea that small shareholders with no training deserve access to the information too. (2) is harder. I have worked on company reports myself but - as with my other post about user manuals - never had the editorial freedom to make them as clear as they could and should be. 

In contrast, with software documentation goal (1) has not been achieved. You, like many others in this field, feel it is a basic mistake to assume software documentation can ever be made clear to complete beginners. This is why you naturally assumed I was saying company reports were clear, and only saying so because I've studied economics. No. I said we all _expect_ company reports to be clear (and rightly so). The first battle has been won in terms of communicating ideas in economics and finance, and the second battle is now in progress. 

Mark G. 

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