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The Oxford English Dictionary defines over 600,000 words used in written
English since the 12th Century. Of these, about 450,000 are still in
use. According to Robert Claiborne (The Roots of English) Russian speakers,
for example, make do with something more than a quarter of that number,
120,000; French speakers with a third. This is not so much a boast
to boost the stature of English as a statement of fact. One need take
no particular pride in claiming English as one's native tongue, which
is inherited by most English-speakers as an accident of birth.
These numbers and comparisons are made to interest those who work in
fields of industry and science plagued if not obsessed with figures,
probability calculations and statistical analysis. On reflection, we
are here dealing with an excessively large number of words in the English
language with which few of us can hope to become familiar in a lifetime
of listening, speaking and reading.
It is also of interest to note that William Shakespeare made much ado
with as few as 25,000 words in his entire body of work. In contrast,
and statistically, the average engineer and scientist on graduation
from university, has an average vocabulary of about 45,000 words. Going
from my experience in the nuclear industry, this number is more than
adequate to write a persuasive report or technical paper provided the
writer is clear about the topic about which one is to write.
If anyone is looking for a lesson in writing success let it be in how
to write in plain and simple English. Easy reading is more often the
result of effort to make the reading easy. Here if anywhere in this
introduction to technical writing is the central theme. That is, simple
writing is specifically simple language written in a simple style.
Grammar and syntax are, of course, important to language, but learning
how to organize and present information clearly and concisely in plain
English are of chief importance.
Expressing oneself in the simplest English does of course mean obeying
the basic rules of grammar, which someone no doubt will happily remind
me I undertook not to discuss. The rules to be emphasised have to do
with the discipline of writing. Nevertheless, the central rule of any
style of writing - and certainly in the technical field - is to write
with clarity. Clear, concise writing means clear, concise and logical
reasoning. To be discussed in due course is what is meant by clear,
concise and logical reasoning will be discussed shortly. Before dealing
with that interesting aspect language it is necessary to dispel some
myths that surround the act of writing.
Myth number one is that writing cannot be taught. That is nonsense.
It is not possible to confer the genius of Tolstoy, Dante or Shakespeare
on anyone, for genius is a gift with which a person is born, but it
is possible to teach one how to write; even the greatest writers had
to learn that discipline.
Number two is that there is such a thing as technical writing; there
isn't, not as a separate and distinct kind of writing anyway, so the
basis on which these papers were begun, meaning 'technical writing',
is somewhat of a deception. Technical writing is simply applying to
technical subjects the technique of research and organisation. This
demands of the would-be writer the same skills any writer brings to
the task of writing. When therefore I refer to novelists or poets or
playwrights, do not be deceived into thinking there is a wandering
from the narrow focus of the subject. This means discussing good and
bad writing, bad in the sense of sloppiness, loose and inaccurate writing.
Myth number three is that the longer the sentence, or the longer the
word, the more important it must be. The very opposite is true as will
shortly be demonstrated. Short words are almost always more powerful
than long words.
ENGLISH THE MONGREL TONGUE English is a mongrel tongue made up of words and phrases thieved without embarrassment from many tongues. It is, to express it another way, a polyglot language meaning 'many tongued' (poly from the Latin for many, and glot, meaning tongue). Robert Claiborne wrote that the English vocabulary has been plundered from every other tongue on earth so that, for example, we get alcohol and alkali from Arabic; bizarre from Basque; coach from Hungary, parka from the Urals; khaki from Urdu; taboo from Tahiti; and okay from West Africa. Examples of such borrowings are endless.
From this it is clear that modern English has many ancestors. Even
so, the English vocabulary comes from two main sources, what might
be regarded as parents of the language: one, the terse and simple Anglo-Saxon
farther; the other, the Latin-based, romantic mother. This second one
is known as Romance English. If those working in the applied sciences
learn nothing else but how to recognize the difference between Anglo-Saxon
and Romance English they will have overcome a major obstacle to writing
in plain English. To be understood in both the spoken and written word,
one must know the difference between these two main streams of the
language.
Some authorities of language including Claiborne regard Greek as a
third and dominant source of words in English. This is true, but because
the Latinos imported a vast number of words from the language of Classical
Greek, that language might be regarded as part of the Romance strain
of the language. So important to good writing is the value of
It is worth dwelling a little longer on the roots of modern English.
In doing so, one offers a different approach to the use of language
than that of most textbooks, which is particularly important to the
technical writer. Why?
Because standard texts emphasize grammar and syntax. This is fine for
those who study language in an academic way. The remarks here offered
on the subject are addressed to those who already have a good working
knowledge of English. The aim is therefore to give those to whom these
notes are directed a more lively sense of the roots of English. That
is because this approach helps engineers and scientists achieve a more
simple writing style.
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THE ANGLO-SAXON ROOT Anglo-Saxon English is the taproot of the language, easily recognized by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the language. Its main characteristic is that words of this root are mostly, but not always, of single-syllable shape, structure and pattern. Single-syllable words are monosyllabic, meaning one-syllable. Words of Anglo-Saxon origin. They are concrete and objective in meaning and are hard to mistake. They are like solid red bricks that lend themselves to almost any sort of grammatical construction and are the main reason why English is one of the world's most widely used and clearly understood languages.
To illustrate this point, consider the sentence, 'The cat sat on the
mat.' This statement of such disarming simplicity might be thought
to have no place in a discussion on technical writing. Yet it illustrates
and important point. The statement can be rendered in several difference
ways without essential loss of meaning. That is:
thereby amply demonstrating the flexibility of the language.
Anglo-Saxon words such as ale, arm, oak, ash, ax, bake, bark, barn,
cap, carve and choke through to wade, wake, yard, yell and yet are
as numerous as grains in a granary. When you hear the couplets
you may be sure that you are hearing near pure Anglo-Saxon English.
The masters of letters have a lot teach us in their use of plain, straight-forward
language. It is no mystery that when they need a powerful opening
a play or prose they employ monosyllabic language to give extra weight
to the thoughts they express. For example, listen with an inner ear
to Antonio's opening speech in The Merchant of Venice. Antonio declaims:
Charles Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities with the statement, 'It
was the best of times; it was the worst of times.' The reader immediately
feels from the power of the simple language that intriguing story is
about to unfold.
The works displaying striking examples of Anglo-Saxon English are many
and not confined to classical literature. In his introduction to quantum
mechanics, Paul Davies, the physicist and writer, in Superforce, writes,
'It is often said that there are two types of science, big science
and little science. Atom smashing is big science. It use big machines
and big budgets, and nets the lion's share of Nobel prizes.' Davies
is a scientist. His writing is technical writing at its best: complex
material presented in the plainest of plain and simple English. Einstein,
who gave us the theory of relativity was exceptional in his use of
clear and precise language. Carl Sagan too, another physicist, use
simple language to explain the nature of the universe in his book Cosmos.
Short, monosyllabic English makes the reader pay attention. The best
playwrights, novelists and non-fiction writers grab the reader's attention
with the use of plain English. This then is the first lesson technical
writers, engineers and scientists must learn. Whatever discipline they
follow or seek to explain, they will improve their ability to convey
their thoughts and ideas if they choose the more simple Anglo-Saxon
words to express themselves. However this is not to deny the importance
of that other main root that has helped make English a strong and versatile
language - and here is why.
ROMANCE ENGLISH On to the Anglo-Saxon root were grafted words and phrases of Latin
origin. These were brought to English first by the Roman Legions of
the Emperor Augustus and then by scholars and priests of the Church
of Rome. Later still, in the year 1066, another strong infusion occurred
from what we call the Romance root; that is, words of French origin
shaped in their formation by a blend of Latin and Greek words.
The main feature of Romance English is that its words are of polysyllabic
construction; that is, 'many' from 'poly' with which we met earlier
in the word 'polyglot'; and 'syllable' from 'syllabic' meaning in the
combination 'polysyllabic' many syllables.
Quite apart from this difference in the number of syllables, words
of the romance root tend to be abstract as opposed to the more concrete
Saxon words. This makes Romance English ideal for abstract discourse.
In Romance English it is possible to discuss concepts that do not correspond
to a visible thing or event and to treat them as though they do, which
is a major contribution to the strength and power of the language.
For example, the Latin word for 'true' is 'verus', which becomes the
more abstract English word 'verify', meaning 'to prove true' and ultimately
ends as 'verification', meaning the act of proving true'. Verification
is a word used with increasing frequency in our technological society.
One of the major problems in U.S.-Soviet disarmament discussions and
with the North Korea nuclear programme was, and is, a 'verification
procedure', which is simply another way of saying, 'Prove you're not
lying.'
Verification however is a word so abstract that it can conjure up not
picture in the mind, though it is grammatically a noun and is, therefore,
supposed to stand for a person, place or thing. The Anglo-Saxon root
is not so easily distracted from its path through the good earth. To
the Anglo-Saxon, a 'spade' remains obstinately, a 'spade'.
Verification and it companions specification, procedure, hospitalization,
identification, and objectification are typical of the words that have
joined modern English from the Latin. They are all polysyllabic in
structure. It is worth dwelling on the difference between these two
main streams of English.
ANGLO-SAXON VS ROMANCE ENGLISH The word 'electrical' is derived from the Greek word 'eletron' meaning
amber. Amber was found by the Greeks to produce static electricity
when rubbed. Left to develop without the influence of Roman English,
Anglo-Saxon might have given us 'ghost-fire' instead of electricity.
If ghost-fire seems far-fetched, consider the word 'mechanical', which
is of both Latin and Greek origin. The original measure of mechanical
power was 'horse strength'. Imagine an exchange between George Stevenson
and a farmer when he stopped his steam engine The Rocket to take on
water.
Did the farmer say, 'Strong engine, eh?' and George proudly reply,
'About twenty Clydesdales,' to which the farmer could have countered
with a whistle of amazement, 'Twenty horses? That be some horse strength.'
During the industrial revolution, horse strength actually entered the
language as 'horse power' and gave sterling service until the coming
of metrication and the assault of System Internationale (SI) units
on Imperial measure. The loss of 'horse power' as a term descriptive
of machine power will a loss to many of the older generation of engineers.
Perhaps the coming of kilopascals to replace units of horse power will
enhance in its own way the melody and cadence of the language.
If it is not already obvious, one might ask what this difference between
Anglo-Saxon and Romance English has to do with the use of language
by engineers and scientists in technical writing. The answer is the
subtle distinction that affects one's ability to communicate with the
written word. That is, although Romance English lends itself to elegant
writing, concrete, direct and emphatic Anglo-Saxon English is essential
to the understanding of technical literature.
In a conscious effort to appear more learned, those who make excessive
use of Romance English tend to lapse into writing and speaking jargon
- to be dealt with more fully shortly - which inhibits the reader's
or listener's understanding. Specialists often express themselves in
elitist language, which becomes an intimidating weapon to people who
do not belong to a particular discipline or sect. This is no doubt
acceptable to those in the know, but is received as gobbledygook by
those outside the circle. For example, the educational psychologist
might say, 'John's behaviors are inappropriate to the classroom setting,'
which is a foreign language to most parents of average education. In
plain language, the psychologist is saying, 'John is an ill-mannered
child who disrupts the class.'
To illustrate the difference between the two main roots of the English
language obscure language, consider the two verses following and decide
who, hearing for the first time, would remember or grasp the meaning
of the opening verse.
Compare this with the following version and decide which is the more expressive.
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