Advocating Plain Language: Thom Haller Discusses The Need For Clarity

Plain language is clear, concise, and straightforward presentation of information. It is professional content structured to eliminate ambiguity and confusion in technical, government, and legal documents. Plain language allows readers to fully comprehend complex regulations, practices and instructions by requiring the language of bureaucracy to reflect the language of everyday speech.

Haller, Thom. Rockley Bulletin (2007). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

AECMA Simplified English  

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (formerly AECMA Simplified English) is a specification for writing aircraft documentation. The principles can be applied to all industry sectors. ASD-STE100 provides a set of writing rules and a dictionary of words and their meanings. It has a limited number of words; a limited number of clearly defined meanings for each word; a limited number of parts of speech for each word; a set of rules for writing text. This article outlines the standard, and shows how it helps to prevent ambiguity in text.

Unwalla, Mike. ISTC (2004). Articles>Writing>Minimalism>Controlled Vocabulary

Answering the Critics of Plain Language

Plain language has to do with clear and effective communication -- nothing more or less. It does, though, signify a new attitude and a fundamental change from past practices.

Kimble, Joseph. Plain Language Network (2003). Articles>Writing>Legal>Minimalism

Applying Minimalist Principles, Strategies, and Techniques  

People use documentation differently from what we might expect. They don’t like to read; instead they jump to a task with prior knowledge, and sometimes don’t realize they’ve made an error. Understanding how users learn and applying John Carroll’s minimalist principles will help provide solutions to this problem. Documentation that has been successfully planned and designed for minimalism may take longer to create than other manuals, but reaps the benefits of making users more productive and happy, while reducing support calls, maintenance, translation, and publishing costs. The key factors to a successful minimalist approach (or any good documentation design) are a keen understanding of your users, prototypes designed to match tasks relevant to users, and iterative testing to improve each draft.

Lester, Susan M.J. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>TC>Writing>Minimalism

Clear as Mud: The Plot Thickens

A lot of the time, management-speak simply seems ridiculous. But campaigners for plain English say there is a more serious side to the issue.

BBC (1998). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Clear Writing: Ten Principles of Clear Statement

If you want to test the clearness of your writing, you may wish to consider using a 'fog index.' Fog indexes measure the complexity of writing samples, and often provide a means of calculating the reading or educational level required to understand a particular passage. Some fog indexes are available as computer software programs, or you may do the calculations yourself.

University of Missouri (1973). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Conciseness is Key to Good Technical Documentation

One of the most important and difficult parts of technical documentation concerns writing in a concise manner. Technical writing is different than writing fiction or magazine articles, where a mood may be set or--in some cases--where space must be filled. (People seldom buy thin books.)

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2005). Articles>Document Design>Technical Writing>Minimalism

A Critical Assessment of the Minimalist Approach to Documentation  

Carroll's (1991) minimal manual has been considered an important advance in teaching first-time users the basics of computer programs. Unfortunately, it is not very clear what minimalism really means. Practitioners, for example, will find it difficult to create their own minimal manual because the principles of minimalism have not been described in enough detail (see Horn, 1992; Tripp, 1990). It is also not yet settled that a minimalist approach is the most effective one because critical experiments have hardly been conducted. This study therefore closely examines the minimalist principles and claims. This paper describes the basic ideas of minimalism, its design principles and how they can be operationalized. A parallel is drawn between a minimalist and constructivist perspective on learning and instruction. Like minimalism, constructivism places a high value on experience-based learning in context-rich environments. Like minimalism, it stresses the need to capitalize on the learner's prior knowledge as much as possible. And like minimalism, constructivists urge learners to follow their own plans and goals, to make inferences, and to abstract principles from what they experience (see Duffy & Jonassen, 1991, 1992). An experiment is reported that examines the claims of minimalism. Strong and significant gains on several factors were found, all favoring the minimal manual over a control (conventional) manual. The discussion points to several issues that minimalism has yet to address.

van der Meij, Hans. ACM SIGDOC (1998). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Deadwood Phrases

Deadwood phrases are found in all types of writing. In technical writing they are to be avoided at all costs as documentation needs to be crisp, concise and accurate.

Klariti. Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Downsizing Documentation: Meeting the Challenge  

The redesign of the Microsoft Windows operating system along with a shrinking page count and Help file-size allocation, presented Windows User Education with a unique opportunity. We not only redesigned our entire documentation model, we also changed and improved our authoring tools. And, along the way, we changed how we did our work.

Bloch, Peggy, Phyllis Levy, Kimberly A. Parris and Gayle Picken. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Editing to Help Students' Backs  

Perhaps the worst way to condense a book is by using smaller or condensed type; you want to be especially careful that all fonts are legible. Neither should you save space by tossing out pictures or diagrams that clarify subjects. Some engineers cram paragraphs together, but paragraphs are valuable structural devices that can make subjects more clear. So the clue to successful condensation of text is not mechanical miniaturization but literary efficiency.

Bush, Donald W. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Writing>Minimalism

Eliminating Unnecessary Words

Using an extended example, this article shows how it is possible to reduce the number of words in a text and at the same time increase readability.

TechScribe (2003). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

From Gobbledygook to Plain English: How a Large State Agency Took on the Bureaucratic Form Letter  

In an effort to reduce phone calls and improve customer service, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries(L&I), in July 2001, launched 'Plain Talk' – a year-long project to rewrite 100 bureaucratic form letters into plain English. Hundreds of thousands of form letters are used each year by L&I to process claims, to issue workplace safety and health citations, and to handle many other workplace issues. As the Plain Talk project manager, I decided to focus on the department’s highest-frequency form letters and now work with 12 programs to rewrite them into clear and simple language. The effort is backed by a strong message from the governor and agency director, high-quality training, ongoing mentoring, and “reality check” usability testing. The project is due to be completed by the end of June 2002.

Botka, Dana Howard. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Language>Writing>Minimalism

From Plain English to Global English

Make your documents easy for EFL users to read and understand, and communicate successfully with people all over the world. About one billion people use English as a foreign language (EFL). You can avoid most pitfalls of cross-cultural communication by using global English.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2001). Articles>Writing>Localization>Minimalism

Get Rid of the Babble

Try to rid your writing, especially business writing, of unnecessary words. They take up space, look impressive only to naive readers, and say nothing.

Leigh, Heather. Crazy for Words (2007). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Good Legal Writing: of Orwell and Window Panes

George Orwell once wrote that `[g]ood prose is like a window pane.' What I take Orwell to have meant by that remark is that when people read good prose, it makes them feel as if they've `seen' something more clearly.

Samuelson, Pamela. University of Pittsburgh Law Review (1984). Articles>Writing>Legal>Minimalism

The Great Myth That Plain Language Is Not Precise  

Occasionally, when you try to convert from legalese to plain language, someone will come forward and assert that you made a mistake. You missed something in the translation. You inadvertently changed the substance.

Kimble, Joseph. Plain Language Network (2000). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

High Tech Humor

The remarkable growth of the information technology industry has created a tremendous opportunity for people with skill putting words on paper. Technical writers, once a rare and highly skilled position, are now as common as fruit flies—though they take up a lot more space. Yet the pay is pretty good considering how little work they actually do, so young English-major weenies desperate for employment continue to swarm around IT companies, hoping for a bit of rotting fru—er, looking for a plum position.

PlainLanguage.gov (2005). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

A History of Plain Language in the United States Government

Awareness of the need for clear language isn't new in the US government.

Locke, Joanne N. PlainLanguage.gov (2004). Articles>History>Writing>Minimalism

How To Write Well

The phrase 'Plain English' (although widely used) is a little misleading. It is nothing to do with the English language as such. The principles outlined here apply to writing in any language. A more accurate expression is 'plain language'.

Ziska Designs (2003). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Needless to Say

The needless repetition of words and the repeating of ideas is everywhere - in newspapers, books, magazines, e-mails, television, and even in conversation. They’re called redundancies and the English language is full of them. In fact, research shows that about 50 percent of English is redundant.

Dowling, Dave. Indus (2003). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Plain Language: What Is It?

When you reach out to your readers, you show that you have considered who they are and what they need to know. Communicate a concern for your readers' needs so they will be receptive to your message.

U.S. Small Business Administration. Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Plain Language Writing: From a Good Idea Emerges Good Public Policy

Peter Zvalo looks at the plain language movement, its promoters and its critics.

Zvalo, Peter. Writer's Block (2003). Articles>Writing>Policies and Procedures>Minimalism