Peter CALAMAI
The Toronto Star

Don't Overlook Images Created with Words

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Many newsworthy developments in different fields of physics don't readily lend themselves to an illustration easily understood by the general public. In some instances the use of an illustration can actually be misleading. It's a safe bet that the planetoid Sedna doesn't actually look much like the artist's drawings widely used with the discovery announcement. Nor did Beagle 2 actually float unharmed to the surface of Mars, the image that most people still have in their minds.

Some images can also be little more than pretty wallpaper, conveying no information by themselves, i.e. people don't know what they are seeing until they are told in a caption or even in a separate article. Astronomical images often fall in this category.

For these reasons it's important to remember that the words in a media account can also be used to convey powerful images to the public. For mass market daily newspapers in Canada, I estimate that is the case in at least two-thirds of published accounts about developments in physics. My remarks will offer guidelines for deciding when word images are more appropriate (than picture images) and techniques for researchers to help journalists paint physics in words.