That's my boy

Last Saturday morning, I asked 8-year-old S if he would take a look at a few paragraphs of back matter for The Day-Glo Brothers.

Over the past few months, and increasingly in the past couple of weeks, my editor and I had been swapping revisions of the sections explaining the basics of light, color, fluorescence, and daylight fluorescence. Having addressed my editor's latest comment, I wanted S to confirm that everything was now perfect.

No dice.

"Dad, I found a mistake," he announced, puncturing my smugness as I ate my breakfast. "You didn't mention infrared."

This was true. I had deliberately left out any reference to the band of energy on the other side of the visible spectrum from ultraviolet. No need to confuse readers by bringing up a scientific term not pertinent to the story.

But I realized I was wrong. Not about the impertinence of infrared (yes, I know there is such a thing as infrared fluorescence, but it's still not relevant), but about the danger of confusing readers. If they can find my book, they can find a dictionary, so I really shouldn't worry about readers not being familiar with "infrared."

The bigger danger is in distracting -- or alienating altogether -- those readers who know there's such a thing as infrared and get an itchy feeling by seeing a description of the visible spectrum and UV ... but ... no ... mention ... of ... what's ... right ... next ... to ... red.

"This guy doesn't know what he's talking about," I could imagine some young reader saying. Obviously, I don't want that. So, I added a reference to infrared, and thanked S for his help. Today, my editor e-mailed to thank him as well.

Without thinking of it in these terms, I'd made a decision to dumb down that text ever so slightly. Here's to S for inspiring me to smarten it back up.