I wrote this paper, subtitled "Revising for Readability as an Act of Translation," to deliver at the Ninth International Conference for Technical Communication in Seattle, Washington, 1984. At that time I was serving as Chief Technical Editor for P-3 Maintenance Manuals at the Lockheed-California Company in Burbank. One of my tasks was to develop strategies for complying with government contractor readability requirements established during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. The abstract of the paper is as follows:
This paper analyses the effect of the Department of Defense readability formula by putting a typical sentence through a series of revisions, systematically increasing readability the equivalent of ten grade levels. Readability is next examined in the light of historical linguistics, with emphasis on the English phenomenon of synonyms at three levels. The final demonstration is an application of historical linguistics to technical communication, showing that revision for readability is comparable to foreign language translation.
This scholarly paper on readability is included here to demonstrate techniques that you can use to simplify your writing.
This paper argues that revising technical documentation for readability is like translating from one language (or dialect) to another. This should be taken into consideration when training technical writers and editors, and when constructing word and phrase substitution lists in programs such as the Navy Computerized Readability Editing System (CRES).1
Paragraph 3.3.3. of Military Specification MIL-M-38784B, dated 16 April 1983 (superseding MIL-M-38784A, Amendment 5, dated 24 July 1978), states as follows:
Technical publications shall be written at a Reading Grade Level (RGL) commensurate with the capability of the target audience for which they are intended as specified by the acquiring activity. The appropriate RGL for each technical publication shall be determined in advance by the acquiring activity.
MIL-M38784B does not specify how the contractor is to rewrite technical manuals to a high school, or, depending on the manual and the service for which it is intended, a middle or elementary school level. The method of compliance is left to the contractor's ingenuity. MIL-M38784B does, however, spell out in detail how to measure readability. The contractor must evaluate a series of 200-word samples, selected according to a specified procedure, on the basis of the following Department of Defense (DoD) readability formula:
RGL = 0.39 (Average Words/Sentence) + 11.8 (Average Syllables/Word) - 15.59
The DoD radability requirements drastically change the writing of technical communications. Writing to a prescribed RGL demands sensitivity to the ratio of syllables per word and words per sentence that is appropriate to the composition of verse. The writer or editor must exercise a keen feel for levels of style, and make the same decisions concerning alternate sets of vocabulary and syntax that a translator makes when converting from one language to another. Since the customer has the legal obligation to refuse any military manual written against MIL-M-38784B but not in compliance with readability, any contractor who wishes to stay in business has no alternative but to learn how to manipulate the DoD readabilty formula to his own advantage.2
Example (1) is a statement taken from an aircraft maintenance manual:
(1) Position maintenance stand adjacent to affected engine.
RGL=14.1 Syllables=16 Words=7 Syllables/Word=2.3
To demonstrate the impact that even minor stylistic chages can have on readability, I will revise example (1) five times, with revised areas underscored. Each revision lowers the reading level by a grade or more, until the sentence is reduced from RGL 14.1 to 3.6. Example (1A) improves readability 1.5 grade levels from RGL 14.1 to 12.6, by the insertion of one article:
(1A) Position maintenance stand adjacent to the affected engine.
RGL=12.6 Syllables=17 Words=8 Syllables/Word=2.1
Example (1B) improves readability 2.6 grade levels, from RGL 14.1 to 11.5, by the insertion of two articles:
(1B) Position the maintenane stand adjacent to the affected engine.
RGL=11.5 Syllables=18 Words=9 Syllables/Word=2.0
Example (1C) improves readability 5.2 grade levels, from RGL 14.1 to 8.9, by the insertion of two articles; and for the three-syllable word "position," substitution of the one-syllable word "place":
(1C) Place the maintenance stand adjacent to the affected engine.
RGL=8.9 Syllables=16 Words=9 Syllables/Word=1.8
Example (1D) improves readability 7.8 grade levels, from RGL 14.1 to 6.3, by the insertion of two articles; and for the three-syllable words "position" and "adjacent," substitution of two one-syllable words "place" and "next":
(1D) Place the maintenance stand next to the affected engine.
RGL=6.3 Syllables=14 Words=9 Syllables/Word=1.6
Example (1E) improves readability 10.3 grade levels, from RGL 14.1 to 3.6. The number of words is increased from seven to twelve, of which all but two are one-syllable. This involves the insertion of two articles; for the three-syllable words "position" and "adjacent," substitution of the one-syllable words "place" and "next"; and for the three-syllable word "affected," substitution of the phrase comprising five one-syllable words "you want to work on":
(1E) Place the maintenance stand next to the engine you want to work on.
RGL=3.6 Syllables=16 Words=13 Syllables/Word=1.3
The ability to simplify technical language to the elementary school level is useful. To determine the Overall Grade Level (OGL) of a publication requires a series of 200-word samples. In each sample there may be sentences that cannot be simplified because they contain essential technicla vocabulary. In order to ensure that a given sample does not exceed the allowable RGL (which would be eighth or ninth grade, or lower), it is a good practice to reduce all sentences to the lowest RGL, even to the third or fourth grade level, if possible. It is unlikely that a customer will reject a military manual because it is written to an RGL that is too low.
As a rule, the grade level is inversely proportional to the number of syllables per word. Thus in the revisions of example (1) above, the ratio of syllables per word decreases. Even so, it is necessary to make a distinction between text that is easy to read and text that conforms to the DoD readability formula. Consider the following examples:
(2) Align dowel pin on gearbox pad with dowel pin hole on starter.
RGL=5.8 Syllables=17 Words=12 Syllables/Word=1.4
(3) Prior to performing maintenance, disconnect and temporarily ground the ignition exciter output terminals.
RGL=17.6 Syllables=32 Words=13 Syllables/Word=2.4
Example (2) has an RGL of only 5.8, as opposed to 17.6 for example (3), and ought theoretically to be three times as "readable." To the literate reader, however, Example (3) is easier to read because it is better written in every respect except readability. The writer or editor must write to the formula, but at the same time there is always room for the exercise of common sense. Readability was originally developed for use in the writing of elementary and secondary school textbooks. Thus the DoD version of the readability formula easily and accurately identifies the RGL of the following nursery rhyme as second grade:
Mary had a little lamb, / Its fleece was white as snow. / And everywhere that Mary went, / the lamb was sure to go. / It followed her to school one day, / Which was against the rule. / It made the children laugh and play / To see a lamb at school.
RGL=2.8 Syllables=55 Words=47 Syllables/Word=11.8 Sentences=4
While technical manuals are not in the same category as children's nursery rhymes, manuals can be easier to read, even when the subject matter is highly complex. However, easy reading is the result of slow, smart writing. As examples (2) above indicates, you cannot trust a low RGL to identify lucid writing. This is the responsibility of the writer or editor. Used to evaluate military technical manuals, the DoD readability formula serves as a convenient but rough measure of textural difficulty.
An exceptionally skilled writer or editor can create "readable" technical communications solely on the basis of instinct and good judgment. Others, however, may need to understand developments in the history of the English language that directly affect readability. These developments offer the basis for a more scientific and rational solution to various readability problems than could be acquired through the exercise of intuition alone.
In requiring that technical manuals be written at a level "commensurate with the capability of the target audience," MIL-M-38784B has a familiar ring. A parallel to the present situation occurred in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England.3 Then, as in the United States in the decade of the 1980s, there was concern regarding what was perceived as a declining educational achievement. Anglo-saxon England in the eighth century had attained the highest level of learning and culture in Europe. By the end of the tenth century, however, those entrusted with safeguarding the religious establishment were less and less able to read even the basic Church documents. It was apparent that "readability" would have to be increased. Scripture, sermons, and commentary could no longer be written exclusively in Latin, the language of the learned, but in what linguists now call Old English, the vernacular language of the Anglo-Saxon people.
The Anglo-Saxon writers of English ecclesiastical prose rejected the practice so common in modern technical manuals of writing that, for example, lights "illuminate" or "extinguish" rather than "come on" or "go out." They refused to clutter their text with Latin borrowings. Even with English grammar, Latin vocabulary would have meant that the translations were still almost as Latin as before, and this would not have addressed the problem. Instead, they created English equivalents for concepts that until then had been expressed only in Latin. Combining native elements, they coined self-explaining compounds such as Old English agenspræc ('own-speech') for Latin idiom ('idiom, one's own tongue'); or Old English ahafenes ('a-heavening') for Latin elevatio ('elevation'). Though the Anglo-Saxons ushered in what literary historians now call the "Golden Age of Old English Prose," their motivating concern was not literary excellence, but profound distress at the decline in competence that forced them to translate Latin texts into the "lewd" vernacular, for they knew that such decline is never without serious religious, civil, and military consequences.
In the year 1066 the Anglo-Saxons paid the price for negligence, for with the Norman Conquest of England the Anglo-Saxon era was abruptly terminated. Almost overnight the Anglo-Saxons became a subservient people, with the English language relegated to lowest status. The literary as well as official language of England was now Norman French. Latin, the learned language, was restored to ecclesiastical use, since the Norman French, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, had never lost their proficiency in Latin.
It too nearly two centuries for English to reemerge at all levels as the official language of England. By then, however, the English language had been transformed almost beyond recognition, for the linguistic impact of the Norman Conquest was far-reaching and permanent, particularly in the area of vocabulary.
English was now characterized by the presence of three categories of synonyms, creating three distinct "levels of discourse." The first level is the popular level, which comprises the native vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon English. The second is the literary level, which comprises the Norman French vocabulary. The third is the learned level, which comprises the Latin vocabulary.4
The differing characteristics of vocabulary at the popular, literary, and learned levels are evident if examples of synonyms are grouped in sets according to etymological origin, in the order Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and Latin respectively:
|
Popular Level Anglo-Saxon |
Literary Level Norman French |
Learned Level Latin |
|
| ape | copy | imitate | |
| ask | question | interrogate | |
| do | perform | accomplish | |
| fear | terror | trepidation | |
| fire | flame | conflagration | |
| folk | people | population | |
| food | victual | provision | |
| lift | raise | elevate | |
| light | shine | illuminate | |
| look | glance | scrutinize | |
| meet | fulfill | satisfy | |
| make | fashion | fabricate | |
| mend | repair | rectify | |
| put | place | position | |
| say | proclaim | annunciate | |
| stab | pierce | penetrate | |
| show | display | exhibit | |
| smell | odor | aroma | |
| speak | converse | communicate | |
| swerve | depart | deviate | |
| take | seize | confiscate | |
| tell | explain | elucidate | |
| think | ponder | cogitate | |
| walk | amble | perambulate | |
| watch | observe | monitor |
For the technical writer or editor attempting to comply with readability requirements, the crucial distinction between levels of discourse is not stylistic (however striking this may be), but syllabic. As a rule, the popular, or Anglo-Saxon English, synonym comprises one syllable; the literary, or Norman French, synonym one or two syllables; and the learned, or Latin, synonym three or four syllables. Since readability requires that the ratio of words to syllables be carefully controlled, some knowledge of the phenomenon of levels of discourse in English is of great practical importance.
to appreciate how levels of discourse affect readability, and present problems similar to those that confront the transtor from one langauge to another, consider example (5), taken from the introduction to an aircraft checklist:
(5) This checklist is a step-by-step guide in abbreviated form for use as a reference to ensure accomplishment of selected tasks by a predetermined sequence procedure.
RGL=15.9 Syllables=46 Words=25 Syllables/Word=1.8
Eight words in the sentence are of Latin origin, all but one multisyllabic:
abbreviated
accomplishment
form
predetermined
procedure
reference
selected
sequence
Five words are of Norman French origin:
check-
ensure
guide
tasks
use
Fifteen words are of Anglo-Saxon English origin:
a
a
a
as
by
-by-
for
in
is
-list
of
step-
-step
this
to
For RGL computation, eample (5) contains 25 words, for "step-by-step" is construed as a three-syllable word, and "checklist" as a two-syllable word. For purposes of vocabular analysis, the sentence contains the equivalent of 28 words, with "step-by-step" three words and "checklist" two. Thus, out of an equivalent vocabulary of 28 words, 28.5 percent is of Latin origin, 18 persent of Norman French origin, and 53.5 percent Anglo-Saxon English origin. The abundance of Latinate diction boosts the RGL to 15.9. To comply with readability, the sentence requires revision. The revision strategy is to reduce the percentage of Latinate diction and increase the percentage of Anglo-Saxon English diction, or, to put it another way, to translate from the predominately learned level of discourse to the predominately popular:
(5A) This checklist is a step-by-step guide to tasks that you must do in a set order.
RGL=5.4 Syllables=20 Words=16 Syllables/Word=1.3
In this instance it is possible to eliminate words of Latin origin entirely. The nonnative vocabulary can be limited to the following Norman French words:
check-
guide
tasks
order
The diction of the revised sentence, example (5A) is now 21 percent Norman French origin and 79 percent Anglo-Saxon English origin. The RGL has dropped 10.5 grade levels, from 15.9 to 5.4. Seen in the light of historical linguistics, with particular reference to the phenomenon of levels of discourse, the revision of example (5) is the equivalent of an act of translation from one language to another.
1J. P. Kincaid, J. A. Aagard, and J. W. O'Hara, Development and Test of a Computer Readability Editing System (CRES), TAEG Report No. 83, Training analysis and Evaluation Group (Orlando, FL), 1980; J. P. Kincaid, L. K. Cottrell, J. A. Aagard, and P. Risley, Implementing the Computer Readability Editing System (CRES), TAEG Report No. 96, Training Analysis and Evaluation Group (Orlando, FL), 1981; and J. P. Kincaid, J. A. Aagard, J. W. O'Hara, and L. K. Cottrell, "Computer Readability Editing System," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications, 24 (March 1981), 38-41.
2For an earlier warning, see J. D. Kniffin, "The New Readability Requirements for Military Technical Manuals," Technical Communication, 26 (third Quarter 1979), 16-19.
3See Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd ed. (London, 1965); and Kemp Malone, "Old English Period (to 1100)," A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York, 1948), pp. 96-106.
4For a good discussion, see Baugh, A History of the English Language. Baugh first defined the synonym levels as "popular," "literary," and "learned."
© Copyright 2002 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.