Showing posts with label technical writing rules. Show all posts

Saturday, May 4, 2013

A 2-day professional ASD-STE100 training opportunity in Helsinki, Finland

Join this ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English training to learn about international documentation standards and achieve:

Cost savings
Reduced translation cost
Professional improvement
Quality assurance
Compliance
Competitive advantage
Shorter time-to-market and downtime

Shufra's training has been fully updated to support the latest version of the specification - Issue 6, January 2013.

Topics

Simplified Technical English will greatly improve the quality of your documentation and help you achieve considerable time and cost savings. This standard regulates the language used in technical publications, making text easier to understand, less ambiguous and more consistent. STE greatly improves translation quality and provides a perfect basis for multilingual translation, saving cost while achieving optimum quality.
See our case study to learn more about the cost savings associated with Simplified Technical English.

When

The STE course will be held on 27 and 28 May 2013, from 9.00 till 16.00 h.

Where

Helsinki, Finland

Who we are

Shufra is an international consultancy firm. It was founded by seasoned industry experts who work according to international standards and have extensive experience in many industries, including aerospace, defense, electronics, machinery, medical equipment, banking and telecommunications.
Please contact us for more information or to register.

This site is no longer maintained

You may be interested in the following links:

www.shufrans-techdocs.com for all technical documentation and publication needs.

www.asd-ste100.net for Simplified Technical English expertise.

www.asd-ste100.solutions for Simplified Technical English training & consultancy services.

International training workshops can be found here:

http://www.shufrans-techdocs.com/upcoming-ste-training-locations/

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The value of rules in Simplified Technical English

Rules regulate the choice and use of words, building phrases and sentences, the use of articles, the verb tenses that can be used and (to some extent) the punctuation. Some of the rules are specific to procedural or to descriptive text. Part of the rules is generally known to professional communicators, but the overall set is in general rather nicely balanced while going beyond most corporate and general style guides.

Some examples of rules are:

• Keep procedural sentences as short as possible
(20 words maximum).
• In an instruction, write the verb in the imperative
(“command”) form.
• Keep sentences in descriptive writing as short as
possible (25 words maximum).
• Start a warning or a caution with a simple and
clear command.

Each rule comes with an often lengthy explanation.

If I could only pick one rule that has a lot of positive impact on readability and re-use, it would be rule 1.1, which basically tells us that we can only use approved words (yes, that’s right –every single word we use has to be approved), and that these words can come from three sources: the general approve vocabulary listed in the specification, Technical Names and Technical Verbs. The latter two are determined by the user, based on industry, company and product.

Copyright © 2013 Shufra, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please refer all pertinent questions to Shufra Consultancy.

Monday, February 11, 2013

How is STE different from company style guides?

Company style guides often include:

· Writing rules

· Company-specific terminology

· Rules on formatting

STE includes:

· 66 writing rules

· Guidelines on company-specific terminology (nouns and adjectives known as “Technical Names”)

· General vocabulary (approx. 900 approved words as well a large number of commonly used words that are not approved in STE)

The main difference between STE and the average corporate style guide thus is the addition of general vocabulary, while providing for flexibility regarding company- and industry-specific terminology – a very powerful concept that greatly facilitates adaptation to a company’s specific requirements.

As STE was developed by people from different companies (including for example Boeing and Airbus), countries (USA, Canada, various European countries) and professional background (writers, linguists and engineers), the rule set and vocabulary are rather well-balanced rather than to reflect the views of a single person or company. Moreover, the rules and vocabulary were validated against actual content from relevant manuals.

Since development of the specification started some 30 years ago, it has seen regular updates, in part based on change requests from users in the field. The current release is Issue 6, released in January 2013. The specification is maintained by ASD (formerly AECMA), the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe.

About the author

Dr. Frans Wijma has a background in electrical engineering and linguistics.

He has been working as a consultant with customers in various industries worldwide and is widely regarded as the leading expert in Simplified Technical English, aviation documentation and multilingual documentation, providing training and consultancy services to customers worldwide. In addition, he is a regular speaker at language and industry events, fluent in 10 languages and a commercial pilot.

Over the years, Frans Wijma was responsible for the development and implementation of STE checker tools for compliance with ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (Simplified Technical English, formerly AECMA Simplified English). He has also worked with the checker tools MAXit (Smart Communications), BSEC (Boeing Simplified English Checker) and acrolinx IQ.

Frans Wijma was the project manager for many translation and development programs for customers worldwide, including Boeing, Embraer, Black & Decker, Rolls-Royce and Fuji Heavy Industries.

In 2001, Frans Wijma was presented with the prestigious Pride @ Boeing award in recognition of exceptional performance in supporting the development of the multilingual Longbow Apache IETM for Korea.