(1) Get rid of the PASSIVE VOICE whenever possible. 

X+ form of "to be" + past participle (+ by) = passive construction

X+ was + eaten + by the dog The dog ate X = active voice (preferable)

(2) Avoid CONTRACTIONS-isn't, don't, and the like-in formal prose. In technical writing, you may use them with the imperative in an instrucfion manual when you give an order (e.g., "Don't forget to tighten the screws first.")

(3) Avoid starting sentences with the following constructions: it is, it was (where the "it" lacks a specific referent) and there is, there was, there are, there were and variations. All of these produce inherently vague sentences.

(4) Watch out for NOMINALIZATIONS, also known as SMOTHERED VERBS

• give preference to (prefer)
• make an enquiry (enquire)
• make a calculation (calculate)
• give consideration to (consider)
• conduct a survey (survey)
• effect a change (change) etc.

These endings signal a smothered verb: -ment, -ence, -ency, -ance, -ancy. After all, these endings are our means of turning verbs into nouns. For stronger prose, you want to turn them back into the original verbs and get rid of the colorless and vague place-holding verbs created by nominalization.

(5) ABSTRACTION makes meanings hard to assimilate

a) abstract words: usually polysyllabics (e.g., signification, advancement) sign, signify, signifying, signification

b) non-specific words: "vehicle" is abstract, while "dolly," "truck," and "forklift" are all specific forms of vehicle. Vehicle creates no mental picture in the reader's mind, while forklift does. "Facility" is abstract and vague; it could mean "easy skill," "loading platform," "toilet" or just about anything else. common abstract/non-specific words: aspect, factor, element, nature, concept. When you find yourself using one of these words, see if you can rewrite to get rid of it.

(6) Avoid some common misconceived and redundant "back formations" (i.e., verbs made from nouns made from verbs) orientate [from orientation from orient) (use orient)

• administrate (use administer)
• variate (use vary)
• explanate (use explain)
• analyzation (use analysis)
• preventative (use preventive)
• interpretative (use interpretive)

(7) Avoid WORDY IDIOMS and REDUNDANCIES

• at the present time = now
• during the time that = while
• in the event that = if
• in the neighborhood of = about
• due to the fact that = because
• in the near future = soon
• on a daily basis = daily
• until such a time as = until
• in the state of Texas
• 4 am in the morning
• grave crisis
• three consecutive days in a row
• absolutely essential

(8) Learn to recognize dangling modifiers, misplaced modifiers, noun modifiers, and piled-up modifiers, and rewrite the sentence to reduce or eliminate them. (see modifier section in this packet)

(9) When listing complex entities-processes, stages of development, elements in a guarantee, and the like-be sure to link them in grammatically parallel constructions. Faulty parallelism throws readers off track and breaks their concentration.

(10) FOG INDEX (see packet); The number produced by applying the fog index equation produces a crude measure of readability. If the resulting number is 12, that means that it takes 12 years of education to read the passage without difficulty. The number is based on American education, so 12 years means 12th grade or someone ready to go to the university.

If the passage registers 22 (22 years of education) you are writing gobbledygook; nearly anything can be written to 15, and you should work on your prose until you can write at 15. The variables which determine the rating are the percentage of "hard" words (three or more syllables) and the average sentence length.

(11) RHETORICAL FRAMING. This consists of the signposts you set up to help the reader assimilate your argument. Early on, you indicate what you are up to and why; you tell readers the units you will be discussing and the order in which they will come up. You establish the importance of your endeavor, and signal what makes it original. At the end, you signal that you are reaching a conclusion. Some formatted forms of tech writing do this with headings:

INTRODUCTION, METHOD, CONCLUSION, etc. Other forms have to build such framing into the prose.

(12) MARKERS. These are small rhetorical signs that tell readers how to receive your material (see packet). Such signs are particularly important when you have nontechnical readers as well as specialists. Words like "however," "unfortunately," "in addition," "finally," "most important," all tell your non-specialist reader what matters and why.

If you say,"Unfortunately, the x turned out to be a y," they know that this is bad, whereas the lack of such an indicator may leave such an audience unsure of the import of your statement. Do not assume that you will only have technical readers: grant-giving committees, management, overseer boards, courts, editors of broad-field journals, tenure committees: these are all going to be less expert than you in your field. SUCH MARKERS DO NOT INSULT THE INTELLIGENCE OF EXPERTS; indeed they simply make your points easier to assimilate.

Skill with such markers is one of the most important tools of a good technical writer. Consider carefully the following examples.

Markers are plain-English (i.e., non-jargon) signs that help readers assimilate your material. The marking may consist of words like "however" or "obviously," which tell readers how they should understand certain ideas. Marking is also accomplished by putting the backbone of the sentence (subject, verb, object or predicate) in very simple, nonjargony English, even if other parts of the sentence consist of technical vocabulary.

The following paragraphs indicate the logical relationships between ideas by means of markers. Outsiders to the field can follow the gist of what is being said largely because the markers guide them. Ideally, the Fog Index would be lower and the piled-up modifiers would be disentangled, but any good reader can follow what the writer is saying. These paragraphs come from an English 418 paper.

Example A

from "Space Marching of Parabolized Navier-Stokes Equations"

Obviously, the complete Navier-Stokes equations can be used to solve such flow fields. However, these equations are very difficult to solve in their complete form. This is particularly true for the compressible version of the equations. Fortunately, for many viscous flow problems to which the boundary-layer equations are not applicable, one can solve a reduced set of Navier-Stokes equations that, in terms of complexity, falls between the fijil Navier-Stokes equations and the boundary-layer equations. These reduced equations belong to a class loosely referred to as the "thin layer" or "parabolized" Navier-Stokes equations. Several sets of equations fall within this class.

[sets of equations listed]

These sets of equations are characterized by their applicability to both inviscid and viscous flow regions. In addition, all of them contain a non-zero normal pressure gradient, a necessity if viscous and inviscid regions are to be solved simultaneously. Hence, unlike the conventional boundary-layer theory, these sets of approximate governing equations permit treatment of viscous-inviscid interaction effects that do not depend on downstream boundary conditions.

Example B

The following example lacks such plain-English markers. All the necessary ideas are present, but their interrelationships are not clearly projected. Furthermore, this project was aimed at a committee consisting mostly of non-specialists who were expected to approve the project (the Protection of Human Subjects committee).

This study proposes investigation of venostatic (tourniquet pressure) effects on hemoglobin and hematocrit and how those values affect relative plasma volume change estimates. During rest and exercise in hot and neutral environments, random sampling error poses a significant problem. Work with human subjects adds to this error by introducing variation among people, investigators' imprecision, and minor adjustments for individuals' immediate comfort. Falsely elevated cholesterol concentrations from venostasis (closed arm vein due to tourniquet pressure) (8) suggests tourniquet pressure affects hematological measures. Fluid entering the tissues, as a result of elevated pressure, may cause these alterations (7). Thus, measurements (1, 10) used to calculate percent plasma volume changes (hemoglobin and hematocrit) may alter by immediate, short-term tourniquet pressure and/or sustained tourniquet pressure. Therefore, our laboratory wishes to answer questions centered on tourniquet pressure at the blood-drawing sample site.

Here is a version with more markers, and with more rhetorical framing to catch the attention of readers and persuade them of the significance of the project.

When you get your blood-chemistry tested, you expect the values to be reliable; after all, you may have to alter your entire life-style on their evidence. However, recent studies suggest that the tourniquet used to "raise the vein" may produce falsely elevated readings for such substances as cholesterol (8). The pressure apparently causes the blood plasma volume to change, and hence distorts the figures calculated in terms of concentration, because they are based on estimated plasma volume (1, 7, 10). Other variables affecting plasma volume and therefore blood chemistry figures are the resting or exercised state of the human subject, hydration, heat stress, and the subject's posture and arm position during the blood-drawing. This study proposes to investigate venostatic (tourniquet pressure) effects on hemoglobin, on hematocrit, and on relative changes in plasma volume. . . . [the rest of the data could go into the more technical description of the project that would come next.]

(13) Keep your SUBJECT and VERB close together in the sentence. Keep them near the beginning of the sentence.

Dangling Modifiers

Dangling: Answering the telephone, the cat ran out the open door.

Correct: As Mary answered the telephone, the cat ran out the open door.

Dangling: It's the third restaurant walking down the road.

Correct: As you walk down the road, you will come to this restaurant third.

Dangling: while walking, a cold chill ran through my body.

Correct: While I walked, a cold chill ran through my body.

Dangling: Toxins have entered our bodies by eating chemically processed foods.

Correct: Toxins have entered our bodies through foods that have been chemically processed.

Dangling: Calibrating the thermistor through the temperature range of] 7o to 19o Celsius, a value of 4.0 +/- 0.lo C .1 molar was obtained.

Correct: Calibrating the thermistor through . . . Celsius, we obtained a value . . . etc.

We have been trying to put him under contract for three years. (trying for three years? a three year contract?)

We must tackle the problem of how stars emit energy from the other end (tackle from the other end? emit energy from the other end?)

Noun modifiers are simply nouns used as adjectives:

fallout shelter production processes

These are necessary and useful, but damaging to the clarity of your prose because the reader cannot logically deduce the relationship implied between the two nouns. When you use noun modifiers, someone in your field who knows the combination will have no trouble, but someone from outside your field cannot deduce the meaning.

a) bomb shelter

b) bus shelter

c) animal shelter

d) tax shelter

These are grammatically identical, but look at the meanings.

• a) shelters people from bombs
• b) does not shelter people from buses but from weather while they wait for buses
• c) does not shelter people from animals nor from weather, but shelters animals from weather etc. until destroying those not claimed
• d) does not shelter taxes or people, but money against taxes

Piled-up modifiers are the multi-unit strings of modifiers all crammed in front of the noun. They usually consist of a mixture of adjectives and noun modifiers.

• a) fifteen person fallout survival shelter
• b) limited particle production processes
• c) polyurethane impregnated nylon tent floor sheet display
• d) short blond bearded stranger

"A short blond bearded stranger" could mean a stranger with a short, blond beard a short stranger with a blond beard a short, blond stranger with a beard

All of the three unambiguous versions are improvements on the original, and they show you how to tackle this problem. Rearrange your modifiers so that some come before and some after the main noun. You can also clarify some internal relationships among your modifiers with commas and hyphens: e.g., "a short, blondbearded stranger."

Readability formulas help you tailor your prose to specific audiences. If the Fog Index says that a sample of prose registers 8, that means that an eighth-grade level of American education is necessary to read it comfortably. The Army insists that instructions for arming nuclear warheads be written to a fog index of 9 (meaning ninth grade education) . Text book publishers used to insist that their college texts be written to a fog index of 12; they have lowered that to 10 or 9 because American college students can no longer read very well. Hence, the meaning of those numbers is arbitrary and actually changing.

The formulas provide simple guidelines, but suffer from obvious limitations. All the formulas (Fog Index, Smog Index, Dale/Chall index etc.) deal with sentence length and the number of syllables, but not with the coherence of paragraph structure, for instance. Nor do they really account for technical jargon and for the fact that a specialist audience can follow the long technical words with little or no difficulty. Hence, while writing for the public (Time magazine) aims for 8, and writing for educated readers (e.g., Scientific American) aims for 13, technical prose for specialists can allow itself to aim for something like 15. Just about anything technical can be written to that level. When you learn to do so, you will be recognized as a good technical writer, because readers, including specialists, are glad to find that they do not have to struggle to absorb what you are saying. The level 15 is about as low as you are likely to go without "insulting" experts in the field. A fog index of 16 is about as high as you can go and still be comprehensible to non-specialists in management or grants-committees or the like.

So far, I have found only two situations in which writing done for this course could not be simplified to 15: the technical abstract, and some kinds of computer science writing. The latter really did not reduce to anything lower than 16, and came out smoothly only at 17. Granting such exceptions, you should try to get your prose down to iS or 16, and figure that anything over 17 is gobbledygook.

How to Figure the Fog Index of your Writing.

(1) Take a sample of over 100 words-a long paragraph is appropriate.

(2) Figure the average number of words per sentence. TREAT INDEPENDENT CLAUSES AS SEPARATE SENTENCES. After all, the independent clause coming after a semicolon (or occasionally after a colon or dash) is a complete sentence linked to the first to suggest logical subordination.

(3) Count the number of words with THREE OR MORE syllables a) omitting capitalized words within the sentence (proper names like Philadelphia) b) omitting words made up of two short words (manpower, bookkeeper; wordprocessor would be "hard" because processor is three syllables on its own) c) omitting verbs that are made tri-syllabic by the suffixes "ed" or "es." Note that "donated" and "endorses" do not need to be counted as long, but "donating" does.

(4) Add the average sentence length to the percentage of hard words and multiply by 0.4.

(ASL + % hard words) x 0.4 = Fog Index

If you use a good wordprocessing program you can get Fog Index numbers and numbers for other such indices of readability by pushing a few buttons. For Wordperfect 6.0, go to the top of your document. Press Alt F-i, then 3 or G for Grammatik, and then T for Statistical Check. You will be given three readability indices plus information on the number of words, sentences, long sentences and short.

Problematic Sentences for In-Class Analysis

1.In the following, as a first step in providing some of the needed data, an experimental program in which detailed flow data was measured using a one-component laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV) in the two-dimensional periodic flow field about a double circular arc, compressor blade in cascade is described.

2.Beginning April 24th observations of A. cooleyi have been made every two days and will continue until October when the insects go into their final overwintering state, on four 7- 10 foot Douglas fir trees.

3.Using the terminology of Simpson, Chew, and Shivaprasad [1981], incipient detachment occurs at 60% chord on the suction surface and transitory detachment at 83% chord.

4.For effective design of such a process, prediction of its rate is desired.

5.It was found that recent graduates of our program contradict the brain-drain theory.

6.It is requested that a check, in the amount of $44.00, be made payable to James Wetherall.

7.Cause of death may be degeneration of vital organs, but bubble formation in the blood is the most widely accepted cause of death. This may be due in part to the results of research on the cause of bends in deep sea divers, which is gas embolism in the blood.

8. The subject is then exposed to increasing dosages until a pain response is elicited.

9. A distinction is made by employers between architects and architectural engineers.

10.It is desired by this committee that your recommendation be brought before the Board.

11.The problems with artificial turf are installation, maintaining it, and repairs.

12.Using the microscope at 250X, the yellow dots are clearly visible.

13.By deducting 10%, the figures will fall within the allowable parameters.

14.Being a Penn State graduate, the skills you mention were part of my training.

15.The factors are; a, b, c, and d.