Re: Something a little more useful than: RE: Pet Peeves

["Susan W Gallagher" <susanwg -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Plain English and Simplified English are not the same thing.

Plain English is a movement by government and law professionals to forgo
legaleese in favor of common English phrasing.

Simplified English is a standard used widely in the aviation and aerospace
industries to make English language documents more readable by non-native
English speakers. It can be summed up by the phrase "one word, one meaning."
In essence, Simplified English says not to use "separate" as both a verb and
an adjective -- choose one (adjective) and select another word for the other
(maybe "divide" as the verb). In reality, the industries that use Simplified
English have very specific vocabularies of x many words that they adhere to.

...and then there's <insert>the</insert> E-Prime<delete>, which is a
</delete> movement <delete>that</delete><insert>, which</insert> recommends
that you write without every using most forms of the verb "to be".
Restricting use of the verb "to be" pretty much eliminates the possibility
of passive voice, and turns sentences like " The Wizard is a utility that
casts spells on unsuspecting co-workers" into "The Wizard utility casts
spells...".      ;-)

Aside from Plain English, which is a Good Idea(tm), and unless you're
working in aviation-related industries, you probably don't want to make any
of these standards your bible, but borrowing something from each will help
to tighten up your writing and make it more usable by non-native speakers.

-Sue Gallagher


On 3/13/07, Chris Borokowski <athloi -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Interestingly, our discussions here seem to have
> covered most of it. The term "simplified" scared me at
> first, but it might mean "de-obfuscated." I think no
> one likes "dumbing down."
>
> --- Steve Cavanaugh <scavanaugh -at- nat-seattle -dot- com>
> wrote:
>
> > Indeed, it is specifically for technical writing.
>
>
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