Plain Language in Science: Signs of Intelligible Life in the Scientific Community?  

'The importance of the work is inversely proportional to the number of people who can understand it' is an outdated attitude in today's scientific arena. The trend toward plain language is gathering force in government, academe, and scientific journals.

Locke, Joanne N., Lily Whiteman and Devora Mitrany. Science Editor (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Scientists Need Plain Language

Expresses concisely why scientists need to use plain language when they write for the public.

Lily. Plain Language Network (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Signs of Intelligible Life  

Looks at a number of institutions that are finding ways to insert plain English into communication between scientists and the public, as well as among scientists of different disciplines.

Whiteman, Lily. Science (2000). Articles>Writing>Scientific Communication>Minimalism

A Study of Theories on Style in Technical Communication

One of the most frequent questions technical communicators encounter is what style they should write in. Unfortunately it is not an easy question. The answer to this question should come from careful theoretical studies and deliberate analysis of the audience and many other factors, such as social environment. In this paper, I wish to analyze theories, which guide the style in technical communication, from three angles: reader analysis, interpretive communities and whether technical communication is plain, instructional, or rhetorical. In the conclusion section, I will try to analyze the importance of extracting valuable parts from each theory and how the valid points from each theory work together to guide technical communicators to choose the right style in technical communication.

Sun, Lily. Orange Journal, The (2001). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory

Wanted: Articulate Scientists  

This article outlines the benefits you can realize by articulating your science clearly and succinctly; next time, we'll look at how and why several academic and government institutions as well as some publications are encouraging this trend.

Whiteman, Lily. Science (2000). Articles>Writing>Scientific Communication>Minimalism

Web Design and Localization

Localization is the process of creating or adapting a product to a specific locale, i.e. to the language, cultural context, conventions and market requirements of a specific target market. In this chapter, we are assuming the English design will be the original design on the basis of which all pages will be localized. The Internet has eliminated distance as a barrier to sharing information at a worldwide level. Now the biggest barrier to communication is language. 2,113,000,000 Internet users speak languages other than English. They make up 70.2% of the world economy. Increasingly multinational companies have their websites localized into multiple languages to take advantage of the promotional and commercial values of the Internet. As they have found, the localization process can be very time-consuming, costly and frustrating if the English web pages were not designed for this purpose.

Sun, Lily. Elements of Information Design (2001). Design>Language>Localization