Mostovi 2002 Technical English
Paul McGuiness
Technical English
Povzetek
Tehnična angleščina
V članku sem navedel nekaj smernic za pisanje tehničnih besedil, s katerimi bralcu omo¬
gočimo lažje razumevanje. Med obravnavanimi temami so: vezaji in pomišljaji, terminologija
interneta, raba aktivnega in pasivnega glagolskega načina, kratice in številke ter še druge teh¬
nike izražanja kot na primer raba konektorjev in paralelizmov. Ob primerih, vzetih iz resničnih
besedil, sem pokazal, kako lahko s pravilno rabo besed in ločil izboljšamo jasnost in razumlji¬
vost našega pisanja.
Abstract
Technical English
In this article I have provided some guidelines for producing technical writing that addresses
the needs of the reader. The areas covered include the following: hyphens and dashes; Internet-
related terms; the use of the active and passive voices; abbreviations and numbers; and tech-
niques like the use of transitions and parallelism. By using real examples I have shown how the
right choice of vvords and punctuation can result in writing that is both clear and easy to under-
| stand.
clarity and help remove any ambiguities. We
need to insert a hyphen when two or more
vvords are used as a single epithet. In technical
writing this occurs very often in such phrases
as:
'... manufactured using state-of-the-art technol-
ogy-‘
the use ofa solid-oxide fuel celi ...
Although an absence of hyphens in the first
of these examples vvould be unlikely to cause
the reader any serious problems—the expres-
sion 'state of the art' is familiar to most peo-
ple—in the second example, vvithout the hy-
phen betvveen 'solid' and 'oxide', the reader
with no experience of fuel celiš vvould be un-
sure as to vvhether it was the 'oxide' or the 'fu¬
el celi' that was solid.
Other examples vvhere leaving out the hy-
phen can leave the reader unsure as to the facts
include:
'...a low frequency response ...
Introduction
When we are vvriting a technical text the
most important point we should keep in mind
is that it is our responsibility as the vvriters to
provide the information in a form that is easi-
ly understood by the intended readers; it is not
the j ob of the people reading our texts to try
and fathom vvhat vve meant. This requires sim-
ple and direct vvriting that avoids ambiguity
and allovvs the information in the text to be ab-
sorbed as quickly and as accurately as possi-
ble. In this short article I have included sec-
tions on punctuation, style, numbers and the
Internet in order to demonstrate how vve can
make the job easier for the reader.
Hyphens
The appropriate use of hyphens and dashes
is one of the ways vve can give our vvriting more
53
Paul McGuiness Mostovi xxxvi, št. i, 2002, 53-58
Is it the frequency or the frequency response
that is low?
mobilephone operators...'.
Without the hyphen they are phone opera¬
tors on the move.
'... the high povver cable connection ...'.
Is this a cable connection designed to trans-
mit a lot of power or the elevated connection
of a power cable?
If the reader is in lučk then the context will
provide ali the information required, and little
or no hesitation or confusion will have been
caused. Hovvever, it is very possible that a per-
son reading such a technical text will not be
very well acquainted with the subject and will
be depending on every word and phrase to pro¬
vide the information required.
Hyphens can also help us avoid ambiguities
with words like 'recover':
'... he decided to recover the chair. 1
Is the chair lost or does it just need its cover
replacing? So as to leave the reader in no doubt
we should write 'recover' if we mean the
former and 're-cover' if we mean the latter. A
couple more examples where the absence of a
hyphen can sow a few seeds of doubt include:
represent re-present
resort re-sort
And what about electronic mail, is it: E-Mail,
e-Mail, Email, email or e-mail? We could argue
that the word is sufficiently well established
now and so it no longer requires hyphenating,
after ali, it has been a long time since 'data-
base' was 'data-base' or 'download' was
'down-load'. There are, however, reasons for
keeping the hyphen: most importantly, it
helps emphasise the stress on the first syllable.
And although it is occasionally written as E-
mail, which is analogous with A-bomb and G-
string, the consensus seems to be with e-mail.
Internet-related terms
The growth of the Internet over the last 10-
15 years has led to a lot of new words and
terms. New dictionaries will usually provide
guidance with the older words like 'surfing'
and 'Internet' but are unlikely to help with the
torrent of new words that have appeared in the
last couple of years. In such cases it is best to re-
fer to a newspaper like The Economist or The
Guardian, which take a consistent approach to
such new words.
One difficulty we often encounter is to de-
cide on questions relating to capitalisation. Of
the four commonly used network words:
Ethernet, intranet, extranet, and Internet
only the first and the last of these always re-
quires a Capital letter. Another general point
worth remembering is that the Internet is not
the World Wide Web (always capitals but with-
out a hyphen), the Internet is a world-wide net-
work (with a hyphen) of computers. The
WWW, sometimes referred to as the Web, is
just the part associated with web pages, which
are stored as files and are accessible with a web
browser such as Netscape Navigator.
Web-based companies are called 'dotcoms'
(not 'dot.coms' or 'Dot.Coms'), and they op-
erate from web sites (not Web sites).
Dashes
Dashes come in two types: the en dash and
the em dash. The en dash, which is usually
Ctrl+Num- with Microsoft Word, connects
continuing or inclusive numbers, for exam-
ple, dates, times, or reference numbers.
Uay-June 1967
13 May 1965-9 June 1966
John 4:3-6:2
1963-2002
The en dash is also used in plače of a hy-
phen in a compound adjective when one ele¬
ment of the adjective is an open compound.
New York-London flight
Post-Balkan Warperiod
We should avoid writing 'from 1947-56' or
'betvveen 1947-56', and instead write 'in
1947-56' or 'from 1947 to 1956.
The em dash is a longer dash, which is usual-
ly Ctrl+Alt+Num- with Microsoft Word. The
54
Mostovi 2002 Technical English
principal use of the em dash is to insert a use-
ful piece of information and make it stand out.
Below are a couple of examples where this in¬
formation is in the form of an illustrative list.
When NATO first offered to open its doors to
new recruits from Eastern Europe—Poland, Hun-
gary and the Czech Republic—Russia loudly
threatened dire consequences, only to discover it
had no veto over NATO decisions and had to
back down.
By the end of the year, a further 18 countries,
from both the developed and the developing
world—ranging from Britain and Canada to
Chile and South Africa—had followed suit.
Both of the above examples, and those that
follow, are taken from the The Economist 1-7
September 2001.
The inserted information does not need to
be in list form, but it must always add some-
thing to the sentence and help focus the read-
ers' attention on the facts.
Macedonia also had an uneasy ethnic balance,
and its own minority—a large one, 30 % or so—
happened to be ethnic-Albanian.
Altogether, some 47m people—one in six Ameri-
cans—live in 18m homes in 230,000 communi-
ties and pay around $35 billion in fees every
year.
A third waywe can use the em dash is to end
the sentence with a flourish and give added
emphasis to what has just preceded the dash.
This year's tax cut was originally a Democratic
idea—and not a bad one at that.
Politicians, in turn, promise to turn a blind eye
to people who squat or build illegally on state
land or who dodge taxes - in exchange for their
votes.
In the last of these examples the em dash is
in the form used in most British publications.
The meaning is the same on both sides of the
Atlantic, however, the long dash (—) [em dash]
popular in the US is replaced by the shorter en
dash with a character space either side (-) [en
dash].
Active versus Passive
Voice
If we use the active voice we will almost al-
ways make our writing clearer and easier to un-
derstand. Technical writing contains far too
much 'it is believed' and not enough 'we be-
lieve'. Quite why so much passive writing ex-
ists is not clear; technical-writing profession-
als in the US have been campaigning against it
for at least 20 years, and judging by the
number of active-language articles in journals
such as Nature, New Scientist and Scientific
American their success, at least at this level, is
almost complete. Less prestigious publications
and technical writing in general, hovvever, stili
contain a lot of texts written in the passive
voice. Having said this, there are some occa-
sions when the passive voice is the better
choice, but the active voice tends to provide
more information with fewer words. Here is an
example of how we can change a long and
vague passive sentence into a shorter, clearer
and more vigorous active sentence.
The heat treatment ofthe samples was carried
out at 850 °C.
We heat treated the samples at 850 °C.
Not only does the second sentence save us
four words, it also gives us more information—
we now know who did the job.
An occasion when the active voice might not
be appropriate is when we wish to stress the ac-
tion rather than the subject.
The mistake was overlooked.
rather than
We overlooked the mistake.
This may be for reasons of modesty or per-
haps we would prefer not to incriminate our-
selves, but, in general, if it is possible to use the
active voice, we should.
Transitions
A transition is mostly a single word or phrase
that connects sentences or elements of sen-
55
Paul McGuiness Mostovi xxxvi, št. i, 2002,53-58
tences to help the reader with the flow of the
text and to aid understanding of the text on
first reading. Remember, it is the writers' re-
sponsibility to make the text as clear and un-
derstandable as possible. The example below
lacks some transition words.
The offer, submitted by Novak d. 0 . 0 . of Kranj,
Slovenia, will probably be accepted by our com-
pany. Most of our institutional shareholders
favour it, according to a survey. Many of the
smaller investors favour the German bid. This
bid is at a slightly higherpriče.
The problem is not that there is anything
wrong with these four individual sentences,
rather, it is difficult to absorb the information
on first reading because the reader is not being
led from one piece of information to the next.
Now look at the same text below, with the add-
ed transitions (boldface type) and see how
much easier the information is to absorb.
The offer, submitted by Novak d.0 .0. of Kranj,
Slovenia, wiil probably be accepted by our com-
pany because, according to a survey, most ofour
institutional shareholders favour it. Not sur-
prisingly, many of the smaller investors favour
the German bid, which is at a slightly higher
priče.
The increase in the number of vvords—from
44 to 46—is a priče worth paying for the im-
proved clarity.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations are an important form of
shorthand that is vital in technical writing, but
they only work if the reader understands them.
Every abbreviation needs to be explained the
first time it is used. The best way to do this is to
write out the words followed by the abbrevia¬
tion in parentheses.
The integrated computer-aided system (CAS) is
not a novelty. One major manufacturer ofelec-
tronic systems has used a CAS approach on ali
its products since 1968.
Abbreviations from the first letters of each
major word are called acronyms and are al-
ways written in upper čase letters.
VHP (very high frequency)
RS (Republic ofSlovenia)
OEM (original equipment manufacturer)
Units of measure are written in lower čase.
ppm (parts per million)
bps (bits persecond)
Abbreviations that can be pronounced and
are composed of bits of vvords rather than ini-
tials should be spelled out in upper and lovver
čase.
Unprofor (United Nations Protection Force)
There is no need to use an abbreviation if
something is referred to only once, and there is
no need to continue to write out the vvords
once the abbreviation has been used—or you
defeat the purpose of using the abbreviation.
When it comes to modifying an abbreviation
for the plural or genitive čase then you should
treat it just like a word.
Euro-MPs' salaries
I have two IOUs for ES
Abbreviations sometimes need the definite
article. Deciding on this is straightforvvard. Ali
we have to ask ourselves is do we speli out the
abbreviation or do we treat it like a word, if we
speli it out then we need 'the'.
the BBC NATO
the EU FIFA
the DZTPS AIDS
We should be careful not to vvrite: HIV virus,
LCD display, AC current, RAM or ROM memo-
ry, PIN number, etc., because in ali these cases
the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as
the word that follovvs it.
Numbers
The numbers zero through nine are usually
vvritten out in full.
nine tractors, one trial run, zero quality defects,
five command centres
56
Mostovi 2002 Technical English
Numbers greater than nine can be written in
numerical form.
back and double check. By spelling out the
first of these numbers, as below:
26 graduate students, 17 washing machines, 99
supermarkets, 11 days
There are, however, some exceptions. If the
sentence contains a mixture of numbers great¬
er than and less than nine then it is best to use
the numerical form for ali the numbers in the
sentence.
The system contains 15 pumps, 5 fans, 5 ducts,
and 3 heat exchangers.
We should also always use the numerical
form for the examples in the table belovv.
Units ofmeasure
Age
Time
Dates
Page number
Percentages
Money
Proportions
9-second delay, 1 Ib
6 years old
2 pm
7 October, 1992
page 3
4 percent, 4 %
$3, Y7, €9
7:1, 7 to 1
At the start of a sentence we should always
speli out the number.
Thirteen samples were produced yesterday.
Twenty-five people attended the meeting.
Two thousand test subjects participated in the
experiment.
This, however, could prove to be very awk-
ward with a sentence like.
154,612 soldiers wili go through the training
program in the next 10 years.
In such cases it is better to re-write the sen¬
tence so that the number does not come at the
beginning.
in the next 10 years, 154,612 soldiers will go
through the trainingprogram.
An example ofwhere we should break one of
the above rules is in the čase of two consecu-
tive numbers. If we write:
••• 2 3-inch wrenches ...'
or
11 60-ohm resistors...'
then we run the risk of the reader misread-
lng the information or at least having to go
'... two 3-inch menches...'
or
'... eleven 60-ohm resistors...'
the information becomes much easier to ab-
sorb and the risk of a costly error is much re-
duced.
Parallelism
Employing parallelism within our docu-
ments is one of the key ways of making our
writing easier to read and to understand. Paral¬
lelism can take many forms, but in terms of
technical writing it means that those parts of
the text that function alike should be con-
structed alike. A good example of parallelism is
the list.
Lists are simple arrays of items either embed-
ded in the text or broken out of the text. Since
the items in each array function alike, they
should be constructed alike. In the follovving
example we have a set of instructions for using
a printer.
a) Not parallel - the sentences giving in¬
structions are constructed differently:
The instructions are as follows.
(1) First, tum the power on.
(2) The next thing is that a sheet of paper is
inserted.
(3) The margins and tabs should then be set,
and the line spacing checked.
(4) Finally, you can begin printing.
b) Parallel - the sentences giving instruc¬
tions are constructed alike:
The instructions are as follows.
(1) First, tum the power on.
(2) Next, insert a sheet ofpaper.
(3) Then, set the margins and tabs and check
the line spacing.
(4) Finally, begin printing.
Since we have used the same pattern for each
stage of the printing process, we have made it
57
Paul McGuiness Mostovi xxxvi, št. i, 2002,53-58
much easier for the reader to follovv the proce¬
dure. Applying the same technique to an en-
tire user manual can save words, time and
money.
Closely related to the problem of non-paral-
lel construction is the all-too-common prac-
tice of using a variety of words to refer to one
thing without letting the reader know. For ex-
ample, if we take a simple sentence like:
First, the alloy was čast in a water-cooled mould
and then the material was milled.
The writer may know that the alloy and the
material are one and the same, but the reader
cannot be sure from reading this sentence. In
the next example we have instructions for us¬
ing a machine.
Prior to attempting to operate the machine you
should make sure that the device is turned on.
Having satisfied yourself that equipment is
functioning properly, you may commence Pro¬
cessing the material or start to load new powder
into the hopper of the injection moulder. The
fmished samples that are ejected from the dies
can either be placed on the aluminium tray,
wire netting or metal box.
After reading this it is hard to believe that a
potential operator would be in any position to
begin working on the machine—or the device?
In just three sentences we have jumped from
machine, to equipment, to device, to injection
moulder and then to dies. At the same time we
have been working with material, powder and
samples. One solution to this problem is to use
just one word to describe something; however,
this is rather inelegant, restricting and the con-
stant repetition can be boring for the potential
operator. A better solution is to link the words
in such a way that the reader is always aware of
exactly what it is that we are referring to. In the
example below the text has been re-written in
this way.
Make sure the injection-moulding machine is
switched on before you try and operate it. Check
that the machine is working correctly before you
start to process the powder already in the
machine or to load newpowder into its hopper.
The processed powder samples, which are ejected
from the moulder's dies, can be placed on the
aluminium tray, the wire netting or the metal
box.
The use of 'the' before the three options for
the placing of the ejected samples also helps to
clarify this point.
Bibliography
Day, R. A., Scientific English, Oryx Press,
Pheonix, 1995
Perry, C. R., The Fine Art of Technical Writ-
ing, Blue Heron Publishing, Portland, 1991
The Economist Style Guide, Profile Books
Ltd, London, 1998
Blake, G. & Bly, R. W., The Elements of Tech¬
nical Writing, Macmillan, New York, 1993
Carey, G. V., Mind the Stop, Penguin Books,
London, 1976
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