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

Nine Easy Steps to Longer Sentences

Are you tired of short, direct, and simple sentences that seem to take forever to fill up a page? Are you paid by the word? In either case you can benefit by increasing the number of words in your sentences and the bulk of your writing. And it's easy if you just follow nine simple steps, many of which you may already know and practice.

McGinty, Kathy. PlainLanguage.gov (2004). Humor>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Overcoming Word Inflation: The Benefits of Minimalist Design

Writers are great inflators. We can take a simple half page describing a computer interface and in a few hours transform it into a 35-page document complete with glossaries, type conventions, overviews, introductions, mission statements, charts, clip art, and copyright pages full of disclaimers, trademark acknowledgements, and credits. The results will make the people in marketing and sales simply glow.

DuBay, William H. Impact Information (2004). Articles>Writing>Minimalism

The Paper Mountain Goes Online

Ample research has proved that companies can save many thousands of dollars by rewriting key documents in plain English. Poor communication on the Web and intranet are squandering the time and money of many an organisation.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2004). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Minimalism

Participles Becoming Prepositions--Some Arcane Information for Editors

A presentation that accompanies the paper of the same name at http://webhome.crk.umn.edu/~mpringle/UsingPaper.rtf.

Pringle, Mary Margaret. STCTC (2001). Presentations>Editing>Grammar>Minimalism

Participles Becoming Prepositions--Some Arcane Information for Editors

In English, some participles have already become prepositions. The author noticed in her work as a technical editor that most of her writers seemed to perceive the participle 'using' as a preposition already although it is not listed as such in the dictionary. The paper gives the evidence and rationale for making such a claim. It offers a window on written language change in progress and celebrates the language user’s ability to make the stolid dialect we call technical writing more vigorous and efficient by turning a participle into a preposition.

Pringle, Mary Margaret. STCTC (2001). Presentations>Editing>Grammar>Minimalism

The Passive Voice and Social Values in Science    

This article claims that two social values in science--falsifiability of science and cooperation among scientists--determine use of passives in scientific communication. Scientists do not always develop valid theories, so scientific experiments must be amenable to being repeated and found invalid. This requires that the experiments must not be discrete events. Science is also a cooperative enterprise. As an integral part of science, scientific writing employs more passives than actives to focus on materials, methods, figures, processes, tables, concepts, etc. Use of passives to focus on the physical world helps de-emphasize discreteness of scientific experiments. Besides, it also helps remove personal qualifications of observing experimental results. Finally, it enhances cooperation among working scientists by providing a common knowledge base of scientific work--things and objects. Looked at in this way, the passive voice in scientific writing represents professional practices of science instead of personal stylistic choices of individual scientists.

Ding, Daniel D. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Scientific Communication>Grammar>Minimalism

Plain English Campaign

Plain English Campaign is an independent pressure group fighting for public information to be written in plain English.

Plain English Campaign. Organizations>Language>Writing>Minimalism

Plain English in Corporate Disclosures: Review and Implications for Consumers, Producers, and the Free-Market System    

The Internet is revolutionizing the investment world. There are clear benefits to these changes, including lower costs and faster access to the market for investors. There also are consequences to these changes when investors take risks without having access to clear, accurate, and full disclosures. In a free-market system, investors must have access to information they can understand and use autonomously to have full and equal access to the investment market. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently passed a rule requiring businesses to use plain English to try and rid disclosures of their traditionally complex and ambiguous language. However, SEC's rule only addresses the front and back sides of prospectus disclosures. Consequently, the success of plain English will depend on the writer and business using it. Public corporations committed to using plain English will empower investors with the information they need to participate in the market freely and safely. In return, businesses will create a more effective and efficient free-market system by maximizing utility, benefiting producers, consumers, and the market as a whole.

Clements, Rhonda. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Financial>Minimalism

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

The Plain Language Process: Steps for Effective Writing

Effective writing does not come by chance. The creation of all documents, including forms, labels, websites, business letters, legal notices, manuals, procedures, reports, and proposals, usually involves the following key steps.

DuBay, William H. Impact Information (2005). Articles>Writing>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

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

The Plain Style in the Seventeenth Century: Gender and the History of Scientific Discourse    

This article analyzes the statements on plain style made by Royal Society writers and seventeenth-century women writers. Using scholarship in feminist rhetorical theory, the article concludes that Royal Society plain stylists constructed scientific discourse as a masculine form of discourse by purging elements that were associated with femininity, such as emotional appeals. The article also discusses how women writers, particularly Margaret Cavendish, embraced a plain style more out of concern for their audience than out of a desire to eliminate undesirable feminine attributes. The implications of this historical study for understanding of current practice are noted.

Tillery, Denise. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Scientific Communication>History>Minimalism

Politics and the English Language

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

Orwell, George. Impact Information (1946). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Putting the White Back in Strunk and White

In web design screeds, the most commonly cited book is not what you might expect. It is not by Jakob Nielsen or Jeffrey Zeldman or Edward Tufte. It's not even on design or typography or code. It is a thin volume of guidelines on writing by a professor 'at the closing of the first world war' and treasured by one student enough to put it into print. William Strunk was the professor, and E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, was that grateful student. White took the master's set of laws, removed some 'bewhiskered entries,' corrected some errors, and added his own chapter at the end for 'those who feel English prose composition is not only a necessary skill but a sensible pursuit as well.'

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Minimalism

Reducing Complexity in Documentation  

With more emphasis being placed on customer satisfaction, technical writers need to focus on information strategies that will lead to happier customers. The complexity of the information is one common complaint of customers. Writers need to understand what customers think is complex. Then, writers need to develop strategies to combat these complexities.

Roscoe-Iverson, Ellen. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>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

Sentence-Style Revision

Problems involving sentence-style cause writing to be unclear, wordy, unemphatic, and difficult to read. But sentences with these kinds of style problems are not necessarily grammatically incorrect—--nor do they violate any of the commonly accepted standards of usage. Yes, perfectly wretched, unreadable writing can be perfectly error-free! Federal, state, and local government—as well as academicians and lawyers in general—have long been the primary resource for wordy, pompous, and just plain bad writing. However, with the Plain English Movement, William Clinton's 1998 Presidential Memorandum on Plain Language, and similar events in state and local governments— government writing is becoming less and less an easy target. This chapter reviews some of the most common sentence-style problems, showing how to recognize them and how to fix them. Surely many others exist —we've just not trapped and labeled them yet. But in the wilds of bad writing, being able to recognize and revise sentence-style problems covered in this chapter will take you a long way—and enable you to recognize other types of problems as well.

McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides>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

Simple Good--Complex Bad

An IBM Ease of Use poster with the message Simple Good - Complex Bad.

IBM (1999). Design>Presentations>Posters>Minimalism

Simplicity

Simple web design delivers huge benefits to designer, client and user. When a design doesn't seem to work, ask what should be taken away before asking what's missing.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>Minimalism

Simplicity

Simplicity as a result of a creative process is 'the ultimate sophistication,' as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) said. Achieving simplicity is a difficult task not only in web-design but in every discipline (art, business, sports, science), yet simplicity for websites is a particular challenge as paper derived graphic design and usability on one side, marketing language and user expectations on the other side are in constant struggle with each-other.

Information Architects Japan (2006). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Minimalism

Simplicity in Your Mind

This article postulates that we cannot address the issue of simplification exclusively by analyzing the physical and computational parameters of technology. Instead, we must understand the goal of simplification in light of the knowledge, tasks, and processing-load demands on its users. We can approach simplicity as an engineering endeavor by controlling the impact on these three usage dimensions.

Santos, Lucinio. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability>Minimalism

Simplicity Is Highly Overrated

I am in favor of good design and attractive products. Easy to use products. But when it comes time to purchase, people tend to go for the more powerful products, and they judge the power by the apparent complexity of the controls. If that is what people use as a purchasing choice, we must provide it for them. While making the actual complexity low, the real simplicity high. That's an exciting design challenge: make it look powerful while also making it easy to use. And attractive. And affordable. And functional. And environmentally appropriate. Accessible to all. That's why I like design: it presents wonderful challenges.

Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2007). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design>Minimalism