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How to Write in Plain English

plainenglish.co.uk

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Re: How to Write in Plain English

#311

Post by athriren »

gjm11 wrote: post #299
omnicognate wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overflowing that buffer really does feel like a stack overflow, too. Your whole mental state just suddenly disappears in a puff of smoke. This resplendent sentence in the Vulkan spec did it to me the other day: The layout of subresources of images on other logical devices that are bound to VkDeviceMemory objects associated with the same underlying memory resources as external memory objects on the lost device becomes…

Trying to rewrite that sentence so it's comprehensible is an interesting exercise. How about this? (I don't know anything about Vulkan, and there is some ambiguity in the quoted sentence, so I've given a few different versions with different meanings. Note that the ambiguity is not necessarily a flaw in the quoted sentence -- it may be perfectly unambiguous, albeit very unclear, to anyone with any knowledge of Vulkan…

Most of the time if someone speaks to me in a non-casual context, my brain is constantly navigating the pathing process you describe. Although language is often not ambiguous, most people do not make their meaning as explicit as necessary to avoid confusion.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#312

Post by ThePadawan »

StavrosK wrote: post #290
ThePadawan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Brazilian roommate who could second this. He (jokingly) complained this was the absolute worst when dealing with split-proposition-verbs: E. g. "aufgeben" translated part-by-part is "upgive", so "to surrender" or "to give up" in English. However, in sth. like 3rd position singular, the form would be "er gibt auf" ("he gives up"). But in German, the object goes between "gives" and "up". Thus, my roommate menti…

So, "the President gives his promise about improving unemploymemt rates up"? This is no different in English: "He told the upstanding, proper young woman off".

A cursory search [0] suggests that English allows not having such a wide gap between verb parts if it sounds odd, i.e.

"He told off the ... woman."

German doesn't (directly) give you that chance.

[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/77472/is-there-a...

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#313

Post by StavrosK »

ThePadawan wrote: post #312
StavrosK wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, "the President gives his promise about improving unemploymemt rates up"? This is no different in English: "He told the upstanding, proper young woman off".

A cursory search [0] suggests that English allows not having such a wide gap between verb parts if it sounds odd, i.e. "He told off the ... woman." German doesn't (directly) give you that chance. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/77472/is-there-a...

Yes, I'm saying it also allows leaving the gap.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#314

Post by szszrk »

fanf2 wrote: post #261
szszrk wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it weird that English texts and speach tend to emphasis different word in sentence that I am used to in my mother tongue. In Polish it's simple, just like in your example, the word that is in bold is the one you are trying to get attention to. But in practice I hear often in English media and books something completely else, where a word next to it has the accent/emphasis, not the one that is CLEARLY ar…

I think there's also a difference between the way I (an English person) would place the emphasis in a sentence compared to the way I hear Americans speak. One thing that frequently makes it more difficult for me to understand is an adjective/noun phrase with the emphasis at the start, so the important part (the noun) is nearly swallowed.

Thanks for your input, this may be it! I checked my old books I mentioned and although my editions are sometimes from UK, the authors are either originally from US or lived there.

I wish I was taking notes while reading, to show examples now :)

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#315

Post by mlvljr »

formerly_proven wrote: post #77
vidarh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really shows, just like docs written by someone who hasn't actually understood what they're writing about yet.

Or those Medium blogs.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#316

Post by himinlomax »

bonoboTP wrote: post #271
segmondy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pronunciation changes meaning too. "i didn't say he stole the money." this doesn't say much, but when a word is stressed takes on a new meaning, so one should be careful to capture the stress in writing. I didn't say he stole the money. - someone else said it, not me i DIDN'T say he stole the money. - you think I said it, it wasn't me. i didn't SAY he stole the money. - I never said such a thing, might have suggested…

While obviously everyone's native tongue seems the most expressive to them, I can't shake off the feeling that written (and often even spoken) English is just lacking a lot of the nuance and expressiveness of other languages. It's just more factual and dry and lacks a lot of implied texture, even after having learned and used it for decades. (But perhaps I'm just still not advanced enough to notice it.) For example i…

It's simple: when you want to express any those different meanings in writing, you don't just transliterate what you would say orally. It's as simple at writing "that" instead of "the." Except, obviously, when the ambiguity is deliberate.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#317

Post by nedt »

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…

I’m from Austria, so I speak german, but I don’t think we buffer. We guess through out the sentence what the next part might be and slowly move that assumption to the final meaning of the sentence. That’s why I have to reread a sentence, when I was wrong. Same principle as in jokes.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#318

Post by maps7 »

rimliu wrote: post #129
maps7 wrote: post #122

I see no proof that 'active' is better than 'passive'. Does anyone have any more information on this?

What would be considere a proof in linquistics?

A study on the impact of both methods? I don't understand how it can be claimed 'active' is better than 'passive'?

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#319

Post by pclmulqdq »

jariel wrote: post #95
dijit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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?

Ping comes from submarine sonar - not the networking world. Everyone of a certain age will have seen a half dozen submarine WW2 or Cold War films so regular people do have context. And there's nothing wrong with it. 'Learnings' is an odd word but it actually makes sense because there are no perfect substitutes. 'Insights' isn't quite it.

I think the word 'learnings' comes to software companies from India. A company I worked at didn't use the word until an Indian senior manager came on, and then everyone started talking about 'learnings.' Conversely, I have heard it used in conversational English between people from India.

There are plenty of other English words that work in context where you might use 'learning', like 'lesson', 'insight', or 'takeaway'. 'Learning' just encapsulates them all without nuance.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#320

Post by kwhitefoot »

cprecioso wrote: post #135
paulnechifor wrote: post #126

> whilst (while) I'm not a native English speaker, but I find it funny how Americans often consider English spellings wrong. I wonder if American Hispanics do the same for Spaniards: > Ahem, it's pronounced "ustedes", not "vosotros". That's not a word.

Spanish spellings are quite standardized around the world, the “language academies” of each country collaborate together. Moreover Spanish writing is phonetic so there’s only really one way to pronounce a written word. On the other hand, in Spain we’re famous for “cecear”, that is to pronounce “c” as the z in zombie; while in the rest of Latin America the pronounce it more like an s.

> Spanish writing is phonetic so there’s only really one way to pronounce a written word.

So there are no accents or dialects in Spain?

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