atw: Re: Tech Writers, Grammar, and the Prescriptive Attitude by Bruce Byfield

Careful, now. There are several problems with the Bryant piece on grammar.
Firstly, there is the matter of conflict of interest - he is not an unbiased 
observer - he has a particular ax to grind. He has a wish to denigrate the 
prescriptive and replace it with the descriptive approach to grammar. Notice 
that there was no balanced approach in his presentation of these two forms of 
grammar usage.

Secondly, he is a self-confessed poet. This means that he focuses on the use of 
language for emotional expression. I suspect that most of our output is 
intended to be as non-emotional as possible - I hesitate to suggest 
'objective', because our various objectivities may differ. However, emotional 
expression often includes alliterations, elisions, ellipses, misspellings, 
onomatopoeia,  unusual word orders and so on, to achieve particular rhymes, 
rhythms or other effects.

Thirdly, he is treading on the dangerous ground of suggesting that we take 
'what is' and let that be our new 'what ought to be'. One of the problems with 
accepting 'what is' is that much of what passes for English in some of our 
potential users/readers is confusing, unclear, possibly offensive to some, and 
incomprehensible without generous hand-waving. 

Fourthly, there is the problem where there are no user studies [= no 'what is'] 
and the employer brings in an American project manager, educated in, say, 
Pennsylvania, who considers that she knows what the English of 12-year-old 
western Sydney users looks like without ever having carried out any systematic 
studies of their usage. So, we replace one set of 'oughts' with another.

My own view is that if our readers stumble in trying to use our output, we have 
not written well. Stumble generators could include: 
  a.. the use of participles as verbs - listen to any ABC sports commentator; 
  b.. the following of singular nouns with plural pronouns - the reader 
searches back to find the relevant prior plural noun, in vain; 
  c.. the use of plural verb forms following such singular noun subject forms 
as none, team, firm, organisation, group;
  d.. neologisms, such as a recent one on this list - 'detriment' used as a 
verb.
In general, I believe that we should look to our users to find out what they 
understand in a most parsimonious way - but that does not mean that we must 
become slaves to sloppiness.

Apart from that, Bryant wrote well, grammatically, didn't he?

Brian.

  From: nigeldawes 


  'Morning AusTechies
  I came accross this article by Bruce Byfield few nights ago, found it really 
interesting and educational, and thought it was worthy of show-and-tell. 
Apologies if I'm slow on the uptake and you've read it before.

  http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/writing/grammar.html


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