CONTRIBUTIONS

The pur­pose of Unknown Knowns is to cor­rect mis­nomers. Your con­tri­bu­tion should aim to put right some of the most com­mon things experts like your­self think ordi­nary, busy peo­ple get wrong about your area of spe­cial­ist knowledge.

Con­trib­u­tors are asked to pro­vide two things:

  1. Your con­tri­bu­tion itself;
  2. A short biography;
  3. A rec­om­mended read­ing list for peo­ple who want to know more about the subject.

Con­tri­bu­tion con­tent and style is essen­tially up to you, but here are some guide­lines we ask you to keep in mind:

  • The level of speci­ficity or gen­er­al­ity is up to you. You can speak about your field broadly, or a nar­rower topic within it.
  • Keep it short and engaging—it is entirely up to you how many points you address. You can also be as in-depth as you deem nec­es­sary to get your point across.
  • If you use any jar­gon, spe­cial­ist terms or unusual words, please define your terms. You may link to out­side resources if nec­es­sary: kindly pro­vide links to def­i­n­i­tions you deem appro­pri­ate. Things should be no more tech­ni­cal than you might expect to find in an intro­duc­tory first-year uni­ver­sity course, so exam­ples and illus­tra­tion are important.
  • The style is up to you. You might write an essay, a dia­logue or a bullet-point-style list.
  • Points made should be those which are rarely mat­ters of dis­pute among most experts in the field.
  • Please also sup­ply a rec­om­mended read­ing list for inter­ested read­ers so that they can fur­ther their knowl­edge, includ­ing, where pos­si­ble, a gen­eral reader for an up-to-date, respon­si­ble intro­duc­tion to the topic as it is cur­rently seen by the field, as well as any­thing else that might be rel­e­vant, engag­ing and accessible.

Because this is the web, you can update and revise your piece any time. Feel free to treat the exer­cise light-heartedly. How­ever, we do realise that this is a seri­ous busi­ness, and that to speak in very gen­eral terms, while remain­ing pre­cise, on a sub­ject can be dif­fi­cult. We appre­ci­ate the value of schol­arly rigour, and we cer­tainly do not sug­gest you com­pro­mise your usual schol­arly stan­dards in writ­ing for Unknown Knowns. How­ever, we also ask that you bear in mind that we do not expect our read­er­ship to have spe­cial­ist knowl­edge. The read­er­ship of Unknown Knowns is largely com­prised of intel­li­gent, well-educated non-specialists, with a broad inter­est in their world and the state of knowl­edge about it. It might help to think of writ­ing for the aver­age col­lege grad­u­ate, or upper-level under­grad­u­ates with­out a back­ground in your par­tic­u­lar field.

As much as pos­si­ble, then, aim to pique a gen­eral reader’s inter­est and rec­tify the most com­mon and glar­ing mis­un­der­stand­ings about your sub­ject, while refrain­ing as much as pos­si­ble from enter­ing into tech­ni­cal­i­ties or over­load­ing the reader with lots of infor­ma­tion. One way of think­ing of it might be to say that the reader should feel as if they are hav­ing a fas­ci­na­tion con­ver­sa­tion with an engag­ing speaker about your topic, rather than feel­ing as if they have been assigned some dense home­work read­ing about it. As a rule of thumb, once you have mulled over it for a while, it should take no more than a morn­ing or evening to put together your contribution.

Please enjoy writ­ing your con­tri­bu­tion. We thank you in advance. If you think other schol­ars and experts you know might be inter­ested in con­tribut­ing, please let them know about our project.

We hope that, with your help, Unknown Knowns can raise the level of pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the uni­verse and some of the things in it, and serve as a use­ful point-of-departure for peo­ple who would like to know more about the things you know.