http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/Impact_Information A listing of works published by Impact Information in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Impact_Information http://tc.eserver.org/31613.html http://tc.eserver.org/31613.html The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the basic concepts of plain language. http://tc.eserver.org/31614.html http://tc.eserver.org/31614.html The next century will be an XML century, make no mistake about it. All our documents, even checks, credit card slips, personal letters, recipes, technical documents, everything, will benefit from XML technologies. Students are already learning XML in schools, and big businesses are using it to publish their databases on the web. The appearance of the electronic spreadsheet ten years ago changed the way we do business. XML will change the way we write documents. http://tc.eserver.org/31611.html http://tc.eserver.org/31611.html One of the central causes of poor writing is a lack of a thorough understanding of the audience. What are the problems that readers have to solve, and how can we help them? Too many writers believe that people will understand what they have written just because the writers themselves understand it. Good writing always begins with a study of the readers' reading skills, their actual physical situation, the problems they face, the motivation they need, and the actions they need to take. http://tc.eserver.org/31608.html http://tc.eserver.org/31608.html Between 21 and 23 percent of Americans (40 million) are functioning at Level 1 literacy rating, defined simply as "not having adequate reading skills for daily life." The rate for California is 24 %, for Orange County, 20%. These are people who cannot read, must struggle to read, or cannot cope with unfamiliar or complex information. http://tc.eserver.org/31609.html http://tc.eserver.org/31609.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31607.html http://tc.eserver.org/31607.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31610.html http://tc.eserver.org/31610.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31612.html http://tc.eserver.org/31612.html Call it the benefits of plain language. The literature contains studies about these benefits, but no one has ever collected and summarized the studies in a way that makes their full force apparent. As you read the summaries in this article, try to imagine the costs of poor writing — typified by officialese and legalese — in business, government, and law. The costs are almost beyond imagining, and certainly beyond calculating. If this evidence doesn't convince organizations and individual writers that plain language can change their fortunes, probably nothing will. http://tc.eserver.org/31615.html http://tc.eserver.org/31615.html The XML train is finally pulling into the station. It brings an ocean change in the way we create, store, and manage information. In October of last year, Microsoft released Office 2003, which brings the promise of XML to the desktop. Previously, Word 2000 saved only the Properties of documents in an XML module in files converted to HTML. In this new edition, you can save or export all Office documents as XML documents. Using XML tags, we can now identify various elements of our documents for manipulation, storage, and retrieval as you would data in a data bank. It also enables us to more easily share information in those documents across other applications (including Web applications), networks, and operating systems. http://tc.eserver.org/31606.html http://tc.eserver.org/31606.html I know from some years running a reading clinic in the United States that you can make more progress if you start the students out on relatively easy reading material so the the students can read the materials with some comprehension and success. But how do you tell these African instructors how to select “relatively easy” reading materials in technical English? The answer - use a readability formula.