The Content Wrangler
Plain English Is Good, But Simplified English Is Better: One Writer’s View
Plain English helps to improve the quality of written documents. Many organizations find that its use brings commercial benefit.
Plain English consists of guidelines such as:
- Keep your sentences short
- Choose words appropriate for the reader
- Use active verbs
Professional writers recognize Plain English guidelines as best practice.
However, Plain English is not sufficiently rigorous to ensure that text is unambiguous. Words such as ‘short’ and ‘appropriate’ are open to interpretation. Thousands of verbs exist in English; sometimes two or more verbs have an identical meaning, and sometimes one verb has many different meanings. A similar situation arises with nouns.
ASD Simplified Technical English
A controlled language specifies the grammatical structures and the words that a writer can use. The purpose is to create brief and unambiguous text.
ASD Simplified Technical English is one particular controlled language. The specification for the language is called ASD-STE100. The specification was developed in the aerospace industry, but it can be used in other industries.
The specification contains:
- A dictionary of words and their meanings
- A set of writing rules
The dictionary contains a list of words that you can use. For example, you can use ‘make sure’, but you cannot use synonyms such as ‘verify’, ‘check’, or ‘ensure’.
Generally, each word belongs to one part of speech. For example, the word ‘oil’ is specified as a noun. So:
- ‘Oil the bearings liberally’ is not allowed, because in this context ‘oil’ is a verb
- The oil is contaminated’ is allowed, because in this context ‘oil’ is a noun
Each word has one meaning. For example, the verb ‘to follow’ means ‘to come after’. It does not mean ‘to obey’. Instead of ‘Follow the safety instructions’, you must write ‘Obey the safety instructions’.
The rules specify the structure of the text. For example, descriptive sentences must have no more than twenty-five words. (This puts a number on the Plain English guideline to keep sentences short.)
Tenses are controlled. For example, you cannot use the present perfect tense. Typically, you would write the sentence using the simple past tense.
Each industry has its own specialist vocabulary, so ASD Simplified Technical English allows you to create a custom dictionary of approved words.
Should we be using some form of simplified English in all our technical writing? Why don’t more writers use it? What resources and software tools are available? For a discussion of issues, see
www.techscribe.co.uk/techw/se.htm.
About the author
Mike Unwalla helps people to use complex software. He has been writing user documentation for software companies since 1995.
In the body of the article we find this rule:
“Tenses are controlled. For example, you cannot use the present perfect tense. Typically, you would write the sentence using the simple past tense.”
And then in the About the Author section we have this biographical information:
“Mike Unwalla helps people to use complex software. He has been writing user documentation for software companies since 1995.”
Given the writing rule and the ambiguity of the word “since”, shouldn’t the last sentence be this:
“He wrote user documentation for software from 1995 until now.”
My vote, for the record, is to ignore the rule and keep the bio as is.