How to Write in Plain English

Post by nske » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #64

nicbou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Reorder or split sentences until it can be avoided. In other words, use a really small buffer. "You must fill form 331 unless you are over 60 years old, in which case you must fill form 445." "You must fill form 331. If you are over 60 years old, you must fill 445 instead." "If you are over 60 years old, you must fill form 445. Otherwise, you must fill…

Experienced UX practitioners will immediately note that a surprisingly large proportion of users don't actually know how old they are; furthermore, of those that do, another significant segment will (intentionally or otherwise) mis-state their age, date of birth etc. This problem is further exacerbated by the wide variety of temporal arithmetic possibilities any such workflow might adopt. The solution is to either co…

Post by nicbou » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:30 AM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #85

nicbou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Reorder or split sentences until it can be avoided. In other words, use a really small buffer. "You must fill form 331 unless you are over 60 years old, in which case you must fill form 445." "You must fill form 331. If you are over 60 years old, you must fill 445 instead." "If you are over 60 years old, you must fill form 445. Otherwise, you must fill…

> Don't make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Funny to read this as I'm learning German! In German the main verb of a sentence has to be at the end depending on the context (e.g: if it is a question, or following some prepositions such as "dass"). Let's say we want to build a question, it will be constructed this way: 1. question marker (such as "Was", "Wo", "Warum", etc) 2. subject 3. other det…

Post by darkerside » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #53

nicbou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I felt while reading philosophy essays. I'm not even sure half of those are even saying anything.

A lot of philosophy essays are written as part of the writer being in the process of trying to figure things out for themselves, without quite having gotten there yet.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

bloak wrote: post #57

dragonwriter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last one requires keeping the first clause of the first sentence in your head; just because you've split sentences doesn't mean you've avoided that, because “otherwise” imports the conditional in the previous sentence by reference and then inverts it. To actually avoid requiring the reader to keep sentence parts in their head, use if-then or do-if constructs, but not if-then-else constructs. “Complete form 445 i…

That's a bad example of how to express age limits. If I've just had my 60th birthday, or perhaps today is my birthday, which applies, or do I have to fill in both forms? Also, is it my age at the time I sign the form, or my age at the time the form is received, that matters? Arguably that's a problem with the rule itself rather than how it's expressed. It's better if you can write something like: "If you were born be…

Post by DrBazza » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

noname120 wrote: post #102

DrBazza wrote: post #56

English vs. business English. Pre-boarding is just boarding. Pre-booking is just booking. Pre-prefixing everything. Sigh. "Please revert" - you mean 'reply', not 'return to a former state'. "Ping me" - ugh. And my favourite.... "Learnings" - you mean lessons. "What drivings have you been on?" ... "What journeys have you been on?"

You might like this George Carlin stand-up show: https://youtu.be/6IC_It9DwDA?t=82