The first day of DocTrain West 2008 featured four 3.5 hour long pre-conference sessions.
I attended the one led by Berry Braster of Tedopres. Braster introduced the concept of Simplified Technical English (STE). One of his main points was that technical communicators are writing for a global audience — many of them non-native speakers — and not for ourselves. The keys creating documentation for this audience are:
- Be clear
- Be concise
- Use verbs and terminology consistently
- Be concise
- Be specific
The overarching goal is to be unambiguous with terminology and grammar. This will not only make your documentation easier to read, but will also derease translation and localization costs.
STE consists of around 900 core words, to which you can add up to 2,000 words of day-to-day vocabulary. You can also add terms that apply to your company or industry. They key, one again, is to minimize ambiguity — one word only has one meaning.
But, as Braster explained, STE is strict but can be flexible when needed. You can pick and choose the rules that you need.
Alan Porter, who helped develop the current STE standard, was in the audience for the first part of the session. Based on some comments from the audience, Porter stressed that you need to differentiate between colloquial and technical English. Idiomatic speech and ambguity are fine for the former, he said, but not for the latter — especially when dealing with non-native speakers of English.
Porter also stressed the need for consistency — one word has one meaning throughout the documentation set. But he also pointed out that even though you’re using a restricted vocabulary your writing doesn’t have to be stacatto or dumbed down to a second grade level.
Finally, Braster mentioned that when adopting STE you need to put aside all of your assumptions about the usage of language. The goal of STE is to make you think about whether or not what you’re doing is the best way or not.
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2 Responses
Bruce Curley
May 7th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
1Berry Braster is correct.
Simplified Technical English (STE) works. As proof, it has been used for years by the airline industry because pilots and air traffic controllers from many nations and tongues have had to communicate quickly and efficiently for safety reasons.
I review my quick start guides, operator’s manuals, work instructions and other material to meet the goal of being clear, concise, and specific…but especially to make sure all verbs and words are consistent.
I write for a global biotech company (QIAGEN) and those who read my documents may use English as a second or third language, so I always use STE … accompanied by photos. The photos are key because they reinforce the words.
A smooth ride through the text « ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog
July 5th, 2008 at 2:33 am
2[...] from DMN writes about a DocTrain West session he attended, given by Berry Braster and listing the advantages [...]
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