Coping with Wordslaughter and the "Good Enough" Syndrome  

Connatser provides advice for technical editors who aren't granted enough time or money to perform extensive revisions on poorly written documents.

Connatser, Bradford R. Intercom (2004). Articles>Editing>Technical Editing

Last Rites for Readability Formulas in Technical Communication    

Some reading researchers and technical communicators assume the efficacy of readability formulas. Reading researchers use such formulas to equalize the reading difficulty of texts used in experiments. Results of an informal Internet survey indicate that some professional writers and editors use readability formulas that are integrated into word-processing software. This article proposes that readability formulas fail to predict text difficulty. The results of an experiment demonstrate that "text difficulty" is a perception of the reader and therefore cannot be objectively calculated by counting syllables, word length, sentence length, and other text characteristics.

Connatser, Bradford R. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Writing>Assessment>Formulas

Reconsidering Some Prescriptive Rules of Grammar and Composition    

Technical writers and editors are beset with rules. As authoritative as they are, published style guides such as The Chicago manual of style, MLA, APA, and Gregg do not address reading theory but hang their prescriptions on the flimsy mantle of tradition. This article challenges some putative rules of grammar and mechanics in an effort to improve technical texts for the people who read them.

Connatser, Bradford R. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Style Guides>Grammar

Two Centuries of Progress in Technical Communication    

A common aphorism in the halls of education is that the writing skills of Americans decline over time. Compared to the "golden age of letters," so the argument goes, each subsequent generation of writers is worse than the last. Although contemporary readers and educators commiserate over encounters with bad writing, a fair comparison of 18th century American exemplars to modern American exemplars reveals a significant advance in clarity, an advance that technical communicators can be proud of. To demonstrate the advances in expository writing over the past two centuries, the author compares what the authors of the U.S. Constitution did with their limited resources to what modern professional communicators do with their abundance of resources. Many of the communication problems that were pervasive when the U.S. Constitution was created have since been remedied by insights emerging from the fields of linguistics, human factors, and cognitive psychology, among others.

Connatser, Bradford R. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>TC>History>United States