Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Some Remarks on Technical Writing
For the past year I’ve been improving my writing. More specifically, I’ve been learning how to communicate technical information efficiently and with style. By “efficient” I mean that each word, paragraph, and sentence is contentful, and that thematic strings bind the story together in an accessible way. A reader can use the document as one might use an encyclopedia, i.e. there are elements throughout the running text that help the reader navigate. And by “style” I mean the cultivation of a voice: the arrangement of sentences; the careful use of symmetric; lexical choices. In technical writing, style decisions are made to help rather than to impress the reader.
“Style” in the popular sense should be avoided. In other words, don’t read Strunk and White. Geoffrey Pullum, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, wrote recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.
The Most Frustrating Language in the World
I anticipate having a heart attack by at least age 35; Arabic may stop my heart well before my third decade commences. Fluency in it has become a primary ambition and I spend several hours a day studying, speaking, and writing. Before moving to the Middle East, I anticipated developing a conversational capability in about ten months. After all, how many people do you know who return from six months in Madrid saying, “Yeah, I can speak Spanish pretty well.”
On English
The process of learning a another language has many ancillary benefits, not the least of which is the insight derived from a different mode of expression. Arabic, for example, reflects the Islam’s cultural import; many common words incorporate the word “Allah” or other religious vocabulary. Muslims also believe that a genuine Qur’an, which itself is ontologically sacred, may only be written in Arabic. Adam and Eve, they posit, also spoke in gutteral, throaty tones, a position that Christians and Jews may find sequacious. Similarly, the French protect the Gallic tongue with a maniacal zeal and take umbrage when others do not mimic their enthusiasm. They view English as a disease that has already subjugated much of the world and left local cultures in a distempered state. The incorrigable French culture, they believe, turns on the universal acceptance of French as a medium of exchange. Similar examples exist elsewhere in the world.
