For whom do we write? Suggestions for getting read in the 21st century.

Anderson and Woessner (1992) include the above quotation as the leadoff to their chapter “Documenting and Reporting Your Modeling Study.” We think such a sentiment applies far beyond groundwater modeling and is even more important now than in 1992. A quick search on the Internet yields an unprecedented cornucopia of information, a wealth that would have required months of scholarly research 50 years ago. At the same time, society commonly communicates via Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, and other social media—vehicles very different from those that have been traditional for publication of our work. An unfortunate result is this: most of us embrace the 21st century power of an interconnected world, but we continue to write for the 20th century. The 20th century reader is one who had the luxury of time to contemplate the full scope and majesty of our methods, dig into nuances of our study sites, and savor the many interesting facets that bedeviled a well-conceived research plan but were ultimately overcome. We forget that the time needed to effectively absorb this type of writing is no longer available to a 21st century reader, especially given the fire hose of information feeding today’s fast-paced world. Communication modes of the 21st century can be characterized as short, focused, and to the point. Twitter has a 140 character (!) limit; an SMS text message is restricted to 160 characters. Yet, it is amazing how much can be conveyed when the writer is pushed to condense, distill, and get to the point. Such distillations are like