RE: The state of State

["O'Shea ,Elizabeth" <Elizabeth -dot- OShea -at- Elan -dot- com>]

Damien wrote:
>Very similar here in the UK - 

I was chatting with a tech writer who had taught in Essex in the UK. She
gave it up after a year because they weren't allowed to correct people's
writing. In Essex everyone says 'should of', and the students write it as
well. Even at second level she wasn't allowed to correct it. 

We have the same problem in the Republic of Ireland. Very few schools
actually teach grammar and punctuation. It's not on the Leaving Cert exam
(you get the Leaving at the end of second level if you pass the exams). You
do have to read lots of literature. So you can get a respectable mark on
your Leaving even if your essay on Othello was grammatically atrocious.
Personally, I don't understand how that can happen.

In fact, grammar is the biggest challenge for most people in Ireland who are
learning to teach English as a foreign language. Certainly there are
students who have started the course without knowing how to differentiate
between a noun, verb, and adjective. Very basic stuff.

Damien also wrote:
>Dumbing down is also a big problem - there's a big difference between
using suitable text for a specific audience and treating them as idiots.

Absolutely. And it appears many managers can't tell the difference. Plain
English is one of my editorial tools (I even have the piece of paper that
says I know what I'm doing), and a very basic tenet is producing writing
that is suitable for the audience. Finding three-letter words to substitute
for longer words in the text is not plain English; writing in the active
voice whenever it's possible, using white space in your documents to make
the text easier to navigate, putting steps in the order in which they happen
- in fact, doing all the things that make for good technical writing anyway
- is plain English. For example, I'm confident the previous sentence
qualifies as plain English even though it's 62 words long. The punctuation
is correct (on this side of the water anyway) and it's suitable for its
audience, who are all technical writers.

elizabeth

Elizabeth OShea
Elizabeth -dot- OShea -at- elan -dot- com <mailto:Elizabeth -dot- OShea -at- elan -dot- com> 


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