Book description
The Global English Style Guide illustrates how much you can do to make written texts more suitable for a global audience. Accompanied by an abundance of clearly explained examples, the Global English guidelines show you how to write documentation that is optimized for non-native speakers of English, translators, and even machine-translation software, as well as for native speakers of English. You'll find dozens of guidelines that you won't find in any other source, along with thorough explanations of why each guideline is useful. Author John Kohl also includes revision strategies, as well as caveats that will help you avoid applying guidelines incorrectly.
Focusing primarily on sentence-level stylistic issues, problematic grammatical constructions, and terminology issues, this book addresses the following topics: ways to simplify your writing style and make it consistent; ambiguities that most writers and editors are not aware of, and how to eliminate those ambiguities; how to make your sentence structure more explicit so that your sentences are easier for native and non-native speakers to read and understand; punctuation and capitalization guidelines that improve readability and make translation more efficient; and how language technologies such as controlled-authoring software can
facilitate the adoption of Global English as a corporate standard.
This text is intended for anyone who uses written English to communicate technical information to a global audience. Technical writers, technical editors, science writers, and training instructors are just a few of the professions for which this book is essential reading. Even if producing technical information is not your primary job function, the Global English guidelines can help you communicate more effectively with colleagues around the world.
This book is part of the SAS Press program.
Table of contents
- Praise from the Experts
- Inside Cover
- Copyright
- Content
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
-
Chapter 1: Introduction to Global English
- What Is Global English?
- Why Global English?
- Benefits of Global English for Professional Writers and Editors
- The Cardinal Rule of Global English
- Global English and Language Technologies
- Practical Considerations for Implementing Global English
- Frequently Asked Questions about Global English
- Typographical Conventions
-
Chapter 2: Conforming to Standard English
- Introduction
- 2.1 Be logical, literal, and precise in your use of language
- 2.2 Use nouns as nouns, verbs as verbs, and so on
- 2.3 Don’t add verb suffixes or prefixes to nouns, acronyms, initialisms, or conjunctions
- 2.4 Use standard verb complements
- 2.5 Don’t use transitive verbs intransitively, or vice versa
- 2.6 Use conventional word combinations and phrases
- 2.7 Don’t use non-standard comparative and superlative adjectives
- 2.8 Use the only with definite nouns
- 2.9 Use singular and plural nouns correctly
- Other Guidelines That Pertain to Standard English
- Useful Resources
-
Chapter 3: Simplifying Your Writing Style
- Introduction
- 3.1 Limit the length of sentences
- 3.2 Consider dividing shorter sentences
- 3.3 Use a verb-centered writing style
- 3.4 Keep phrasal verbs together
- 3.5 Use short, simple verb phrases
- 3.6 Limit your use of passive voice
- 3.7 Consider defining, explaining, or revising noun phrases
- 3.8 Use complete sentences to introduce lists
- 3.9 Avoid interrupting sentences
- 3.10 Avoid unusual constructions
- 3.11 Avoid ambiguous verb constructions
- 3.12 Write positively
-
Chapter 4: Using Modifiers Clearly and Carefully
- Introduction
- 4.1 Place only and not immediately before whatever they are modifying
-
4.2 Clarify what each prepositional phrase is modifying
- 4.2.1 If the prepositional phrase starts with of, then do nothing
- 4.2.2 If the prepositional phrase modifies a verb phrase, consider moving it
- 4.2.3 If a prepositional phrase modifies a noun phrase, consider expanding it into a relative clause
- 4.2.4 If readers and translators can determine what the prepositional phrase is modifying, then do nothing
- 4.2.5 When necessary, insert a translation note
- 4.3 Clarify what each relative clause is modifying
- 4.4 Use that in restrictive relative clauses
- 4.5 Consider moving anything that modifies a verb to the beginning of the clause or sentence
-
4.6 Clarify ambiguous modification in conjoined noun phrases
- 4.6.1 Consider using identical grammatical structures in each noun phrase
- 4.6.2 Consider inserting an article after the conjunction
- 4.6.3 Consider reversing the order of the noun phrases
- 4.6.4 Consider using an unordered list
- 4.6.5 Consider using a compound sentence
- 4.6.6 Consider repeating a preposition
- 4.6.7 Consider inserting a translation note
- Chapter 5: Making Pronouns Clear and Easy to Translate
-
Chapter 6: Using Syntactic Cues
- Introduction
- 6.1 Don’t use a telegraphic writing style
- 6.2 In a series of noun phrases, consider including an article in each noun phrase
- 6.3 Use that with verbs that take noun clauses as complements
- 6.4 Use that in relative clauses
- 6.5 Clarify which parts of a sentence are being joined by and or or
- 6.6 Revise past participles
- 6.7 Revise adjectives that follow nouns
- 6.8 Use to with indirect objects
- 6.9 Consider using both . . . and and either . . . or
- 6.10 Consider using if . . . then
- 6.11 Make each sentence syntactically and semantically complete
-
Chapter 7: Clarifying -ING Words
- Introduction
- 7.1 Revise -ING words that follow and modify nouns
- 7.2 Revise -ING words that follow certain verbs
- 7.3 Revise dangling -ING phrases
- 7.4 Punctuate -ING phrases correctly
- 7.5 Hyphenate -ING words in compound modifiers
- 7.6 Eliminate unnecessary -ING phrases and -ING clauses
- 7.7 Revise ambiguous -ING + noun constructions
- 7.8 Revise ambiguous to be + -ING constructions
- The Grammar of -ING Words
-
Chapter 8: Punctuation and Capitalization
- Introduction
- 8.1 Ampersands
- 8.2 Colons
- 8.3 Commas
- 8.4 Double Hyphens
-
8.5 Em Dashes
- 8.5.1 Whenever possible, use a separate sentence instead
- 8.5.2 Consider other ways of eliminating em dashes
- 8.5.3 Make sure the sentence would be grammatical if the em dash phrase were omitted
- 8.5.4 Don’t use em dashes as a formatting device
- 8.5.5 Don’t use em dashes to set off cross-references
- 8.5.6 Don’t use em dashes to set off definitions
- 8.5.7 Don’t use em dashes to set off examples
- 8.5.8 Don’t use em dashes to set off non-restrictive relative clauses
- 8.5.9 Don’t use an em dash to introduce a complete sentence
- 8.5.10 Don’t use an em dash to introduce an -ING phrase
- 8.5.11 Approved uses for em dashes
- 8.6 Equal Signs
- 8.7 Hyphens
-
8.8 Parentheses
- 8.8.1 Make sure readers can understand what parentheses are intended to indicate
- 8.8.2 Make parenthetical information grammatically independent
- 8.8.3 Whenever possible, put parenthetical information in a separate sentence
- 8.8.4 Eliminate unnecessary parentheses
- 8.8.5 Eliminate parenthetical comments that impede readability
- 8.8.6 Don’t use (s) to form plural nouns
- 8.8.7 Approved uses for parentheses
- 8.9 Quotation Marks
- 8.10 Semicolons
- 8.11 Slash
- 8.12 Slash used in and/or
- 8.13 Capitalization
- Recommended Reading
-
Chapter 9: Eliminating Undesirable Terms and Phrases
- Introduction to Controlling Terminology
- 9.1 Eliminate trademark violations
- 9.2 Eliminate obsolete terms
- 9.3 Eliminate internal terms
- 9.4 Eliminate text strings that indicate errors in a source file
- 9.5 Eliminate repeated words and phrases
- 9.6 Eliminate incorrect technical terms
- 9.7 Eliminate variant spellings
- 9.8 Eliminate orthographic variants
- 9.9 Eliminate terms from other varieties of English
- 9.10 Eliminate obscure foreign words
- 9.11 Eliminate unnecessary Latin abbreviations
- 9.12 Eliminate other non-technical abbreviations
- 9.13 Eliminate clipped terms
- 9.14 Eliminate certain contractions
- 9.15 Eliminate unusual non-technical words
- 9.16 Eliminate other unnecessary synonyms
- 9.17 Eliminate wordy phrases
- 9.18 Eliminate idioms
- 9.19 Eliminate certain idiomatic phrasal verbs
- 9.20 Eliminate colloquialisms
- 9.21 Eliminate metaphors
- Related Guidelines
- Appendix A: Examples of Content Reduction
- Appendix B: Prioritizing the Global English Guidelines
-
Appendix C: Revising Incomplete Introductions to Unordered Lists
- Introduction
- Modal Verb Separated from Main Verbs
- Infinitive Marker to Separated from Infinitives
- Relative Pronoun Separated from the Rest of Some Relative Clauses
- Preposition Separated from Its Objects
- Subject of Infinitives Separated from the Infinitives
- Subject Separated from Verbs
- Verb Separated from Its Direct Objects
- Interrupted -ING Phrase
- Gerund Separated from Its Objects
- Appendix D: Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Accelerate Your SAS Knowledge with SAS Books
Product information
- Title: The Global English Style Guide
- Author(s):
- Release date: April 2008
- Publisher(s): SAS Institute
- ISBN: 9781599948423
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