Specialist provider of technical writing services, technical writer placement services, and training in technical and scientific writing
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PublicationsNumerous papers have been written over the years by Abelard consultants, each on some aspect of technical or scientific writing. Some of these are listed below and can be read (and printed) by clicking the associated link. Further, between 2009 and 2011, Abelard Consulting published Words, a free, quarterly e-journal on technical writing and communication (with contributions from technical writers all round the world). The twelve issues of Words can be accessed by clicking here. Note that the search facility (at the left of this page) will search through these publications as well as through the Abelard website. |
| In defence of the passive voice | Many modern language handbooks (and Instructions for Authors) are advising writers to choose the active voice wherever possible. Indeed, preferring the active has become a mantra of the Plain English movement. But many of the arguments put forward against choosing the passive voice are misguided or poorly grounded. There are numerous circumstances where the careful writer should choose the passive voice (and some circumstances where they have no other option). This paper looks at some of those circumstances (and challenges some of the arguments put forward for avoiding the passive voice). | |||||
| Chunking the information presented to readers: A critique of Information Mapping | Many writers feel that information needs to be presented to readers in small quanta or chunks. An industry has grown up around Information Mapping, a methodology that insists on limiting the chunks presented to readers to 7 plus or minus 2. The Information Mapping methodology is supposedly based on research done by American psychologist George Miller. This paper looks at Miller's research and concludes that it does not support a 7 plus or minus 2 chunking limit. Moreover, more recent research—and logic—show that a chunking limit, whatever its size, is irrelevant in determining whether a reader will comprehend what they read. We may have reason to chunk the material we present to readers, but it cannot be based on a fixed limit (such as 7 plus or minus 2). | |||||
| Language in motion | There are growing signs of a swing back towards linguistic puritanism, to the view that there are correct and incorrect ways of writing and speaking. Proponents of this view must, however, accommodate the rich variability that the language has shown over the centuries (much of which is of respectable pedigree). This paper describes some of that variability and then challenges a number of arguments for linguistic prescriptivism (the view that, despite linguistic variability, some usages are right and some wrong, come what may). The paper ends with an exploration of how writers can continue to embrace the goal of writing for maximal communicative efficiency while still accepting that change is inevitable, and even continuous. | |||||
| Readability statistics: what do they really prove? | The Plain English movement, and legal challenges to organisations publishing indigestible public documents, has fuelled a resurgence of interest in readability and its measurement. Sentential measures of readability (based on sentence length and syllable count) have many supporters. The readability statistics that Microsoft Word gives are based on sentential measures. This paper argues that sentential measures cannot define readability, nor can they be reliably used as indicators of readability. Numerous examples of texts that score well on sentential measures of readability but which are of dubious readability are given. This is followed by an analysis of the purported correlation between readability and sentential measures, and by a critique of the methods commonly used to validate readability formulas. | |||||
| Writing English for an international audience | A critique of the guidelines issued in 2003 by the International Council for Technical Communication (INTECOM). | |||||
| On wikis and the death of technical writing | An examination of the view that end-user documentation is best written by end-users, collaborating through a medium such as a wiki. | |||||
| Controlling technical vocabulary | On the importance of limiting technical vocabulary to a sub-set of possible terms and the usefulness of subject-specific thesauri in achieving that goal. | |||||
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Words published articles on many issues of relevance to technical writing and communication, such as:
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Papers by Abelard consultants