Andrea Wagner
In keeping with our promise to provide an article on watercooler chats, here is a summary article of the most recent water cooler chat. This chat was held on June 9, 2010, and it focused on the strategies for simplicity. The chat was moderated by Andrea J. Wagner. Andrea is a Sr. Technical Writer at Schneider Electric in Raleigh, NC. She has 15 years’ experience in technical communication.
At the start of the chat, Andrea stated her premise that the more complicated the material, the simpler the writing style should be. Andrea also stressed that highly technical material is taxing to read, even for experts.
The Three Strategies
In the engaging chat, Andrea gave three important strategies to simplify the writing style.
- Shorten sentences.
- Use proper grammar and punctuation.
- Favor simple, muscular words.
Shorten sentences: Andrea stated that we could make it easier for users if we change complex sentences to compound sentences and compound sentences to simple sentences. She mentioned that long sentences and multiple clauses are more grammatically complex, so they’re more open to grammatical errors.
Use proper grammar and punctuation: The chat focused on the need to keep phrasal verbs together as well as to avoid dropping articles. Andrea indicated that using capitalization carefully prevents confusing the users and using punctuation well can make long sentences more readable.
Favor simple, muscular words: Andrea recommended the use of muscular or strong words. Strong words that do their own work without modifiers. She considered “very” the most useless word in the English language.
And, here is the link to the chat transcript:
http://www.stc-techedit.org/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=130
Also, here is the link to Andrea Wagner’s handout on the Strategies for Simplicity:
http://www.stc-techedit.org/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=124