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How to Write in Plain English

plainenglish.co.uk

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Re: How to Write in Plain English

#141

Post by jedimastert »

aclimatt wrote: post #100

I'd guess (almost) everyone wishes everyone else wrote in plain language. But there's potentially a more fundamental reason people don't. bambax in another comment pointed out the power of ambiguity, and that's one of the reasons especially in legal / government, but there's another. Language, specifically jargon, is an expression of culture. It's an expression of power, education, experience, or lack thereof. It's a…

> "would you say you practice disruptive innovation methodology?"

My eye genuinely twitched reading this sentence

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#142

Post by kieckerjan »

j4yav wrote: post #113
dgellow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I learned Dutch, which does the same thing with the verb, and at one point after a few years it just clicked and started feeling natural to structure sentences that way. I've been living abroad long enough that occasionally I catch myself trying to organize English sentences in that way as I'm speaking (which, of course, results in falling flat on my face at the end.) In Dutch at least, you can imagine these really l…

Actually, in Dutch there is quite some flexibility in verb ordering. Teachers actively warn against so-called pliers-constructions where a subordinate clause is wedged between subject and verb.

Example time!

Dutch: "De man die de vrouw die bloemen plukt kust." Literally: "The man who (the woman (who flowers picks)) kisses" Meaning: "The man who kisses the woman that is picking flowers"

The subordinate clause is sandwiched between subject and verb. However, Dutch allows the following order:

Dutch: "De man die de vrouw kust die bloemen plukt." Literally: "The man who (the woman) kisses (who flowers picks)"

In this case the verb kisses has moved to the front. It is a transformation that allows a form of tail recursion elimination. After the main verb the parse stack for the main clause can be popped and all resources dedicated to parsing the trailing subordinate clause(s). This allows us to string together quite a lot of subclauses without getting lost.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#144

Post by [deleted] »

j4yav wrote: post #113
dgellow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I learned Dutch, which does the same thing with the verb, and at one point after a few years it just clicked and started feeling natural to structure sentences that way. I've been living abroad long enough that occasionally I catch myself trying to organize English sentences in that way as I'm speaking (which, of course, results in falling flat on my face at the end.) In Dutch at least, you can imagine these really l…

[deleted]

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#145

Post by robin_reala »

rimliu wrote: post #134
nicbou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must also consider people who are not native speakers. I'm sometimes appalled by the complexity of the letters I get in Germany, especially when they are related to immigration.

So, the solution is to dumb everything down to the least common denominator?

You say ’lowest common denominator’ like it’s a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing to try to support all your users.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#146

Post by ht_th »

t_akosuke wrote: post #35
dreen wrote: post #14

Heres a great list from GOV.UK of the kind of words to avoid when using Plain English: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...

someone could write a simple grammar checker that looks for words in that list, passive voices, sentence length and whatnot and suggests alternatives. It wouldn't work without human oversight but then again, no automated checker really does.

I use https://languagetool.org/ for that. I have integrated this Java program in Vim as well. Every time I think I finished a piece of write, I run the ":LanguageToolCheck" command to learn that my writing still leaves a lot to be desired.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#147

Post by mrmonkeyman »

dijit wrote: post #59
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?"

“Ping me” really threw me for a loop the first time I heard a non-tech say it in an obvious non-tech way. It literally has no other meaning outside of the ICMP echo utility; and the onomatopoeia of hitting glass. How did it enter the Business world?

Blackberry.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#148

Post by aazaa »

The article doesn't mention the way that word placement changes the meaning of sentences. From a video I recently saw but can't recall, consider these sentences:

- Although John is a nice guy, he beats his dog.

- Although John beats his dog, he's a nice guy.

- John is a nice guy, but he beats his dog.

- John beats his dog, but he's a nice guy.

These are all plain English sentences, but will be interpreted quite differently. For the moment, try to set aside the moral judgement on dog beating and consider what the author's opinion of John is in each case.

For example, readers tend to latch onto the last part of a sentence. So putting the nice guy part last tends to support John. Whereas putting the dog beating last tends to undermine John.

Same facts, almost the same words, but different messages.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#149

Post by zeckalpha »

motohagiography wrote: post #143

As someone who finds passive language patronizing and insulting, this is a relief to read.

“this is a relief to read” -> “reading this relieved me”

Perhaps passive voice isn’t as annoying to you as you claim. There is a difference between writing passively and using passive voice.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#150

Post by BurningFrog »

strogonoff wrote: post #17
dreen wrote: post #14

Heres a great list from GOV.UK of the kind of words to avoid when using Plain English: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...

Love it. Check out “Writing for GOV.UK”[0] for more guidance. Among interesting things to note that they strongly discourage FAQs (“if you write content by starting with user needs, you will not need to use FAQs … they are usually not frequently asked questions by the public, but important information dumped by the content editor”). The concept of FAQ has long been a pet peeve of mine, although I do believe the “ques…

A useful FAQ list must consist of questions that are actually often asked.

They represent discovered problems in the text the author didn't foresee.

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