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Front Page: Writing to communicate


Criminal writing


Other uses of the spellchecker


Slash the slash


Initially redundant

Editorial Assistance
Plain language


Cursing a blue streak

Writing is for communication. This is no less true of technical writing than of writing for newspapers, magazines, or books of fiction. Except perhaps for a few novelists or poets, we do not write solely to express ourselves; we write to say what we have to say, so that our audience can understand it.

—Matt Young
The Technical Writer’s Handbook
(University Science Books, 1989)

The Editor’s Job

If something can be read two ways, somebody somewhere will read it the wrong way. A “cooler is not a large system impact …” stated one document we edited. We queried the author: “Does this mean ‘a cooler would not have a large impact on the system’ or ‘a cooler does not have an impact on large systems’?” The reader might have read it only one way, or not understood it at all. The editor looks for things that are perfectly clear to the writer but not clear to others, and makes sure that the writer will be understood.

Care About the Reader

Unfortunately, this writer was not alone. Not in making mistakes—we all make those—but in not caring.

If you don’t care about grammar, at least care about the reader. If you have something worth saying, care about communicating it.

Bad writing is like any other form of crime; most of it is unimaginative and tiresomely predictable.

—Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)

Other Uses of the Spellchecker

When it stops at a proper name, if you’re sure it’s spelled correctly, click on “Ignore All.” Then watch for different versions of the same name. This procedure has saved me countless times, spotting, for example, (Senator) Arlen “Spector” after I’d verified that “Specter” was correct.

The spellchecker can also find abbreviations used only once or twice. The first time it comes to an unknown term, such as MDR (“medium data rate”), I click “Ignore” and make a note of it. If it appears three times or more, I click “Ignore All.” Otherwise I spell it out in the one or two places the spellchecker found it. This technique won’t work if you add those abbreviations to your personal dictionary.

—Steve Dunham

Slash the Slash!

In the hands of many technical writers, however, the slash is treated like a utility conjunction. Here is an example from an Air Force document, New World Vistas:

Information and Space will become inextricably entwined. The Information/ Space milieu will interact strongly with the air and ground components …

Another example from that same document: human/machine interface. Again the slash seems to indicate not alternatives but a joining or meeting. Ordinarily a hyphen would be used: human-machine interface.

If writers are looking for a punctuation mark that means “inextricably entwined,” like the snakes on the caduceus, maybe they could try the section mark, and write, “The Information§Space milieu,” and, “human§machine interface.”

Initially Redundant

The multitude of capital letters substituting for words nowadays has created an explosion of redundancies because writers couple the shortened versions to words without thinking about the meaning.

It’s dismaying to find even Tom Clancy, the preeminent technical writer of fiction, repeatedly referring to HARM missiles in his book Carrier (HARM missiles are High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile missiles).

Elsewhere, we have the GPS system (the Global Positioning System system), the IC community (the Intelligence Community community), LEA agencies (law enforcement agency agencies), and a whopper of a redundancy, the GLONASS satellite navigation system (the Global Navigation Satellite System satellite navigation system).

It seems that many writers are not only forgetting the literal meanings of ordinary words (such as “arena”—see how often “hippodrome” could be substituted for “arena” when that word is used as, supposedly, a metaphor) but forgetting the literal meanings of the abbreviations they bandy about. Instead of giving precise meaning in a small space, they add words without adding meaning—and that’s a failure to communicate.

Plain Language

• Identify your audience.
• Organize to meet your reader’s needs.
• Use a question-and-answer format.
• Use “you” and other pronouns to speak directly to readers.
• Use the active voice.
• Use the appropriate tone.
• Write clearly.

• Use short sentences.
• Write to one person, not to a group.
• Use the simplest tense you can.
• Use “must” to convey requirements.
• Place words carefully.

• Keep subjects and objects close to their verbs.
• Put conditionals such as “only” or “always” and other modifiers next to the words they modify. Write “you are required to provide only the following,” not “you are only required to provide the following.”
• Put long conditions after the main clause. Write “complete form 9-123 if you own more than 50 acres and cultivate grapes,” not “if you own more than 50 acres and cultivate grapes, complete form 9-123.”

• Undefined or overused abbreviations and acronyms.
• Two different terms used for the same thing (car, vehicle, auto, conveyance—choose one).
• Giving an obscure technical or legal meaning to a word commonly understood to mean something different (defining “car” to include trucks).
• Strings of nouns forming complex constructions (surface water quality protection procedures).
• Pronouns that don’t clearly refer to specific nouns.

• Use lots of informative headings.
• Write short sections. Include only one issue in each designated paragraph.
• Use vertical lists.
• You shouldn’t use ALL CAPS; they’re much harder to read.

—Tom Clancy, Marine (New York: Berkley Books, 1996)