The power of plain English

I was unable to go to the ASTC (NSW) Conference this year, which was held in Sydney in conjunction with the Plain English Foundation’s international conference. However, I’ve been reading some glowing reports from various attendees.

One mentioned Angela Colter’s presentation on the assessment of credit card disclosure documents that she did for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). The slides are interesting, but for me, there were two that REALLY stood out.

The first shows the median reading level of US adults (Grade 8), against the reading grade level of card member agreements (Grade 12) and annual percentage rate information (Grade 17). Scary stuff:

The second illustrated the power of plain English by comparing text on one of those credit card agreements before and after plain language principles were applied:

Some of the presentations from this conference are available here: http://www.plainenglishfoundation.com/Paperspresentations/Workshoppapers/tabid/3292/Default.aspx

[Links last checked November 2009]

Business and financial terms

The Financial Times, that esteemed London-based newspaper, has added a business and financial terms lexicon to its website (http://lexicon.ft.com/).

You can ‘browse thousands of words and phrases selected by Financial Times editors and suggest new terms for the glossary.’

They even have a definition for a ‘naked writer’! But it’s not as exciting as you might think:

[Link last checked November 2009]

Euphemism for the sack

Yesterday I was editing an annual report for a small company, and came across these sentences in the “People” section:

Some business restructuring also occurred across [the organization] to manage costs in response to the economic recession leading to an increased proportion of non-voluntary turnover on previous years. Management is closely monitoring turnover in line with our objective to maximise commitment and retention of our people.

Um, hello? Isn’t ‘non-voluntary turnover’ a euphemism for the sack?? And if management forced some people to lose their jobs (i.e. sacked them), surely they have a hide to state that their objective is to ‘maximise commitment and retention of our people.’

There’s nothing like a few ‘non-voluntary turnovers’ to make those that remain more committed and more likely to be retained. NOT.

And that paragraph was then followed by this one, which is a nice gobbledegook, ‘weasel word’ one, if ever I saw one:

As [our] systems for capturing employment data improves so too will our ability to monitor and report on voluntary versus non-voluntary turnover and consequentially [sic] to improve management response strategies.

Huh?

Think you know your font names?

Do you think you’re pretty up to date with the various font names? Or perhaps you’re more a cheese person and think you know their names well?

Well, here’s an opportunity to test yourself! The Cheese or Font website (http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/) lets you test yourself by displaying various names and you click on whether you think it’s the name for a cheese or a font.

[Link last checked September 2009; thanks to Stuart B for alerting me to this fun website]

Can traditional publishers add value in an online world?

As more and more individuals self-publish (blogs, wikis, social media, on-demand publishing, as well as vanity press publishing), how relevant are traditional book publishers? What can they do to maintain some sort of market share in an increasingly fragmented world where anyone can be a writer — not matter how good or bad they are — and where anyone can put their thoughts out there for the world to see?

At a panel discussion held in Boston in June 2009, Andy Oram from O’Reilly (the publishers of those computer books with line drawings of animals on them) offered these suggestions for where publishers can add value:

• Proofing for grammar, syntax, and consistency of usage
• Fact-checking
• Editing unclear and ambiguous passages
• Integrating facets of large-scale text

You can read the entire article, with his supporting arguments and comments from others, here: http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/06/four-roles-for-publishers-stay.html

I particularly liked this comment:

A writer needs an editor, like an athlete needs a good coach, to help improve their performance.

(BTW, if I had the job of editing that list, I’d push for parallel structure on the second list item — ‘Checking facts’ instead of ‘Fact-checking’ — so that it matched the structure of the other list items! Just saying…)

[Links last checked July 2009]

Random text generator

I’ve written previous posts on Word’s random text generator, and some online ‘lorem ipsum’ text generators.

Here’s another one that generates ‘readable’ random paragraphs in English for you — just enter the number of paragraphs you want and click Generate: http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/text/

[Links last checked September 2009; thanks to one of my Twitter people for this link -- sorry, I didn't note down who it was!]

User assistance by any other name would smell as sweet

Joshua Porter, over at bokardo social web design (http://bokardo.com), says in his Writing Microcopy article:

The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.

The examples he gives and the advice he offers are great. But the term he uses for these small pieces of user assistance on the interface — ‘microcopy’ — is not one familiar to me as a technical writer. It’s a term that sounds like it comes from marketing writing.

I wonder if he is familiar with the term that technical communicators use — ‘user assistance’?

Perhaps we should get together and agree on terms so that we can offer a united front on making sure these pieces of information are as useful to our users/readers/customers/clients as possible.

[Links last checked July 2009]

Computer terms

The IBM Terminology website (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/terminology/index.jsp) ‘consolidates the terminology from many IBM products in one convenient location.’ It includes ‘base computer terminology, terms and definitions from [various IBM] brands and product families ‘.

In the words of Art C on the STC Lone Writers SIG discussion list, who alerted me to this computer dictionary:

It seems to have more general computer terms than many dictionary sites, although there’s an obvious IBM bias.

Extract from the IBM Terminology website

[Links last check September 2009; thanks to Art C for letting me know about this site.]

Acronym Finder

There are some really cool tools on the internet. Some are new shinies; others have been around for years — like Acronym Finder: http://www.acronymfinder.com

But just because Acronym Finder has been around forever doesn’t mean it’s lost its usefulness. Sure, it may not have the gloss of the new shiny objects, but it does what it does really well and very quickly. One thing I particularly like about it is that it offers similar items for the acronym you’re looking for — just in case you got it wrong, or in case there are multiple definitions for the one you entered.

The image below shows the results for CSIRO — in addition to the definition, the Abbreviation Database Surfer below it is pretty handy! (and yes, I know the CSIRO spells themselves as “Organisation”…)

Example result from Acronym Finder

[Links last checked August 2009]

Can inanimate objects own or do things?

Can an inanimate object own something (and therefore take the possessive form)? Can it do something?

This question has been perplexing me for a while — I’m working on a project and others on the project are stating things like “The XYZ Project will submit an annual report to government…” in the documents they’re writing. As editor, I’m picking them up on it as it is my understanding that only companies (inanimate but full of people, which are animate), roles (occupied by animate objects), and named individuals — among others — could ‘do’ something, not inanimate things like a Project.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style:

• Inanimate objects can take a possessive (e.g. the table’s legs, the vehicle’s speed) (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/PossessivesandAttributives/PossessivesandAttributives02.html)
• Inanimate objects can do some things, but not others (e.g. ‘this document analyzes the hazards’, but NOT ‘this document orders a pizza’) (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Usage/Usage54.html)

Grammar Girl has these things to say on related topics:

• Collective nouns (and the use of singular/plural, prepositional phrases): http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/collective-nouns.aspx
• People versus Entities: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-who-that.aspx

I couldn’t find anything relevant in the Australian Style Manual, but that’s because there were no relevant index entries that matched the terms I searched for.

The final word on the subject should go to John S who answered my question with a large dose of reality:

There’s a place for technical precision, and this may not be it.

Your example seems to me to be one of those useful wiggle-words. Someone has to write the report. It’s a Big Deal and we’re not sure who will do it, but someone will do it. Uncle Sam doesn’t care who does it as long as it gets filed. For today, that statement lets the people in the project move forward.

You should remind the appropriate actors that the submission of the report hasn’t actually been assigned to someone. If they “Yes, we know, because we don’t know yet” then let it go. If they say “Oh gosh, that’s right! Joe will be responsible for that” then you can move forward (although I’d recommend using the title rather than the name, in case Joe wins the lottery and moves to a South Sea island…)

Thanks John! I’ll try not to be too pedantic about it any more!

Of course, if anyone has any style guide references or websites they can quote to add to this topic, feel free to add them to the Comments.

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