commensurate - too clever for technical readers 2

[columb]

I've just had a report knocked back because I said that the results of a trial were 'commensurate with expectations'. I feel that anyone who doesn't know what commensurate means should look it up. My boss feels, and I can see his view point, that I'm expecting too much for my audience.

So how do others feel about this? Do you agree with my boss? Is it the duty of technical writers to dumb down their prose or is this part of the continual erosion of our beautiful language? Or was I just showing off?

Columb Healy
Living with a seeker after the truth is infinitely preferable to living with one who thinks they've found it.

 

[Stella740pl]

SQLSister,

But in USA, any technical, IT being not exception, professional group would always contain a good segment of not native English speakers. I guess, unless you are writing for English-second-language textbook, it would be not a good idea to craft your texts specifically aimed for this audience. The results are never good, unfortunately. Besides everything else, those are usually people from different backgrounds, and the words they would consider easy or hard are also very different, and it's not safe to assume that the "long" word is always the hardest one.

 

[sleipnir214]

columb:
Out of curiosity, what is the receiving audience of this document?


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[ESquared]

My Brazilian fiancée often understands "difficult" or technical words better than "normal ones" because they are often very similar to Portuguese.

For example, she would find it very easy to remember the archaic word for surgeon, chirurgeon because the Portugues word is cirurgão.

"Easy" word - "Hard" word - Portuguese word
(human) egg - ovule - ovulo
foreskin - prepuce - prepúcio
scatter - disseminate - disseminar
bully - intimidate - intimidar

I think that's enough to demonstrate that it's very difficult to know what words someone will consider difficult.

-------------------------------------
It is better to have honor than a good reputation.
(Reputation is what other people think about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.)

 

[ESquared]

In fact, what do you know:

Portuguese comensurar:

v. tr.,
to measure (two or more amounts) with the same unit;
to compare;
to provide;
to equalize;

v. refl.,
to equalize itself;
to compare itself.

She'd probably understand it no problem.

-------------------------------------
It is better to have honor than a good reputation.
(Reputation is what other people think about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.)

 

[edfair]

Columb,
I wasn't suggesting you be a rebel. I was proposing that you exercise your talents to changing the report to a more simple form as your boss requested while keeping the contents interesting to those who might think it too basic.
I hope you hit both expectations.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[LaurelLee]

I worked as a technical writer for some time, and I am sad to say that I discovered most people had a fairly narrow vocabulary. My boss had at least one objection per page for work that I submitted to him. I came to the conclusion that he did not know what I was referring to half of the time, and he was a gentleman of about 60 or so. I have never thought myself to have a larger vocabulary than the next educated bloke out there, but I think a bit differently now. When in doubt, I dumb everything down. I don't want my boss to feel foolish or stupid around me because it seems to foster hostility, which is the last thing I want coming from my boss!

___________________________________________________________
With your thoughts you create the world--Shakyamuni Buddha

 

[sleipnir214]

ESquared:
What you're saying about Portuquese congnates of complex English words makes sense. I remember reading somewhere that something on the order of 70% of all English words of more than 2 syllables come to us from Romance languages.

I experienced the opposite when in Germany. A lot of "little" English words have German cognates, but longer German words are based on German affixes, not Latin ones.


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[sha76]

Sleipnir did you come across many technical words in Germany and if so, in what area? I ask because I found the technical stuff quite understandable & just wondered if that varies between different fields? I did a month of fossil excavation in Germany after my degree, which was in gelogy. I speak a little German, but really only enough to find my way around, buy food, hold very basic conversations, yet when we were given tours of the lab and talks about the geology of the area, which were aimed at a level for the German graduates there, I felt I understood the majority of what was said.

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[columb]

sleipnir214
For the record I'm a Unix administrator working in the UK. I was evaluating a work recording system. My audience was entirely native English speakers and senior IT managers.

CajunCenturion
I'm not sure how 8th grade relates to the UK school system. Year 8 is for 12 to 13 year olds over here. I'm not sure my son, at 15, would understand it but I would expect him to look it up if he didn't.

However, I'm moving towards LaurelLee's point that words the we find normal can be intimidating. Maybe I'll leave my erudition for when I write my book.

Columb Healy
Living with a seeker after the truth is infinitely preferable to living with one who thinks they've found it.

 

[entaroadun]

I would think, with the large number of job postings on Monster that offer "salary commensurate with experience", that a technical audience would know exactly what it means!

 

[Dimandja]

For a native English speaker, yes, I would expect an IT professional to know the word.

For a non-native English speaker, I honestly don't know.

This is a common misconception of native speakers about non-native speakers. Words native speakers find "hard" may be quite "simple" for non-native speakers.

Esquare demonstrated that quite eloquently.

 

[sleipnir214]

sha76:
My time in Germany was 3-1/2 years while I was in the Army with an attack helicopter battalion, so my technical conversations dealt with either things military or things aviation.

There wasn't a lot of overlap with military terms, as English seems to take a lot of them from Romance languages. The aviation technical lingo was pretty cross-language.


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[Llwynog]

I've only just seen this forum - fascinating.
Fascinating because I thought that the english language was to be made use of (rather than confuse !).
The bottom line is, that if I don't know the meaning of a word, I look it up - in a dictionary !
Surely not so difficult - even for 'techies'
Regards,

 

[elanor]

As a technical writer, I frequently write documents that are used by native and non-native English speakers with a wide range of technical expertise and are translated into a variety of languages. Because I cannot count on the linguistic sophistication of my audience or of my translators, I usually give up my multisyllabic impluses in favor of absolute clarity. Occam's Razor rules technical writing, too!

 

[ESquared]

Someone just told me about how when she had a single-car garage added to her house. In the forms she had to fill out for the local government building inspector-type people, was the term "fenestration." Evidently it means all non-solid openings to the exterior such as windows, skylights, sliding glass doors. She complained to various people and eventually got to the guy who'd actually created the form. He protested that all the engineers in the industry knew what it meant. She pointed out that the form was for people like herself and she felt intimidated and put off by the fancy language.

There definitely is a certain point to customizing one's language for the audience.

And for what it's worth, it works in *both* directions. If that same form-creator was writing a document intended for those engineers, he should use the correct terms, or they will be put out just as much as my friend was.

-------------------------------------
It is better to have honor than a good reputation.
(Reputation is what other people think about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.)

 

[strongm]

Absolutely

 

[Jomama46]

I think your boss was wrong.
In the unlikly event that someone in the audience had never heard it before, I'm sure the meaning would be immediatly clear!
But the boss is always the boss.

Jomama