21–30 of 113 posts
Another project that I know is this version of Wikipedia - https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are some improvements in the "more readable" text, but also some noticeable regressions: "Born premature" is an established turn of phrase. You read it, you know exactly what is meant. "Born early" is not an established phrase. You have to think about it more. It could mean "born early in the morning" or "born before her time" or "born prematurely". You can figure it out, it's not rocket science, but it's a lit…
The way they rephrased also simply omitted detail, which doesn't seem like a fair comparison. I'd much rather see an example where no detail is lost but would still have wider comprehension. Literally dumbing it down by stripping detail doesn't seem like a clear best practice.
The more precise a term is, the more it expresses without added verbiage, but it’s also less likely to be widely understood.
In my opinion, one of the easiest ways for writers to make things more readable is to not use synonyms for technical terms. If you are a researcher and you have referred to the "cell membrane", don't turn around and refer to that same thing as the "plasma membrane", "cytoplasmic membrane" or "phospholipid bilayer" later on in your article unless you have a damn good reason.
These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write. The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally. When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph…
I agree with some simplifications, e.g. "profoundly deaf" is essentially meaningless and bad style, it adds nothing over simply saying "deaf", but most other instances of paraphrased and simplified text miss something. Saying "a couple dozen" is natural language, this is how regular humans speak. What is gained by removing flavor and natural idioms from language?
To me, a lot of these simplifications sound like removing natural language and replacing it with something written by a robot, or where the target audience are children or non-native speakers. The text loses its flavor while aiming to be as simple to understand as possible; that's not a tradeoff I would choose in the majority of situations.
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." - David McCullough I agree with many of the other posts here. Some of the translations highlighted in the article seem to either lose important information or introduce confusing information. The most striking example for me was the translation from > A strong tremor in her hand makes it impossible for her to use American Sign Language…
I think about it often especially when someone tries to explain something and it seems hard, very often this means it's also hard for them.
"People with ID" means "people with identification" to me. My brain was thrown off by that phrase even in the plain version of the third and fourth paragraphs.
I tried to write this comment in a "plain" style from the beginning. There are still a few items that I think could be improved. "for whom English..." might be one example.