These are the Nourishative principles:
- Aim for the current best understanding of the truth. What do the most informed among us believe could be the best ways forward?
- …even if it’s been said before and it’s very boring. Even if it’s very controversial or is rarely said. Our collective best understanding of what science believes is the truth right now is what matters.
- Don’t try to concoct a story if it doesn’t exist.
- Try not to rely on individual research papers. Look for a balance of competing arguments. Look for consensus across wider analyses of all data in the field.
- Present all valid arguments. Present them with the facts and data.
- If the data is inconclusive, say so.
- Don’t let personal beliefs or biases influence research or reporting. Combating climate change doesn’t happen if we do the wrong things, however much we might want to believe them for our own reasons.
- Be aware of the bias and vested interests in other’s work when researching.
No jargon
There’s a lot of jargon in the scientific and academic literature. Try to avoid this. For example:
dis-benefit
Instead, use ‘negative impact’.
A few copywriting styles of note
Earth
Capitalise when it’s the planet, not when it’s soil.
CO2
Uses a subscript. On Google Docs, that’s Command+.
organic
Should be lowercase.
Units
There’s a helpful style guide here to make sure we get units right. We add a space between the number and the unit for clarity.