Plain Style and Scientific Style: The Influence of the Puritan Plain Style Sermon on Early American Science Writers

Batschelet, Margaret

doi:10.2190/x7ln-6ukb-53c7-144f

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Hemingway's "minimalist style" is said to correspond to the "technical communicator's goal...: to avoid burdening ... audiences with information they don't need" (Poulsen, 1990, p. 341). Published in a leadingjournal that represents the present-day institution of technical communication, Batschelet's (1988) study of the influence of the Puritan plain-style sermon on early American science writers again reinforces my contention that this institution now accepts as a tacit but foundational premise an equation between scientific and technical writing the copula of which is the idea of plain language. (This article also ignores the fact that several historians ofEnglish prose style have demonstrated connections between Puritanism and the plain style in England well before the era that Batschelet covers [Adolph, 1968;Barber, 1976, p. 77;Fisch, 1952, pp.…”

Section: Motivations For the Studysupporting

confidence: 55%

Ideas About the English Language in Early Technical Writing Textbooks

Hagge¹

1995

DW/R

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Early 20th-century American technical writing textbooks were addressed primarily to students and practitioners ef engineering. The article argues that 12 important textbooks datingfrom 1911-1930 somewhat paradoxically conflate three different traditions eflanguage use prevalent in America at the time. This conflation occurs because engineers in their dual role as applied scientists and progressivist managers were extraordinarily sensitive to language use. In turn, broader social and intellectual currents in America are used to explain engineers' linguistic concerns, which the textbooks, based on engineering practice, mirror. ALTHOUGH I HAVE WORKED as a technical writer and editor, and although I have taught technical editing and business communication, my primary academic training has been in languages and linguistics. Currently I teach courses on general linguistics and on the history ofEnglish. My scholarly publications focus mainly on how English is used in professional (business, scientific, and technical) documents and on how practitioners, teachers, and theorists have conceptualized the role of language in such texts. This autobiographical information has been included to clarify my approach to this paper, which presents a preliminary account of how certain ideas about language prevalent in post-helium America were combined and codified in early engineering writing textbooks. These textbooks, which primarily address engineering students and practitioners (Connors, 1982; Hagge, 1995), reflect the preoccupations of the contemporaneous engineering profession 1 This article is a revision of a paper presented as Invited Speaker, Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, Learned Societies Conference/Congres des societes savantes, Calgary, June 4, 1994. Initial research was done during an Iowa State University On-Campus Sabbatical Semester for Study in a Second Discipline, Spring, 1994.

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Section: Motivations For the Studysupporting

confidence: 55%

Ideas About the English Language in Early Technical Writing Textbooks

Hagge¹

1995

DW/R

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History and the study of technical communication in Canada and the United States

Connor

1991

IEEE Trans. Profess. Commun.

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How electronic outlining can help you create online materials

Price

1997

Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation - SIGDOC '97

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Ugh. Outlines. The very thought makes many writers shudder. I understand the revulsion. As taught in high school and college, the paper outline often seemed an arbitrary chore, a rigid plan we bad to follow even if we came up with a better idea later, a stupid rigamarole of labels and formats from Latin and math. Why did our teachers assign them so often?Well, because our papers were, structurally, a mess. Our teachers hoped that in the process of outlining we would consider various possible structures, and emerge with the most coherent, effective, and convincing organization possible. Alas, most of us just wrote the paper and then cooked up a fake outline to get by. We neatly avoided getting any benefit out of all those outlines.Ten years ago, with the invention of electronic outlining, the world received a tool that actually made it possible to get that benefit out of outlining. The electronic outliner made it easy to create and revise an intellectual structure, analyzing the hierarchy and sequence more rigorously than ever before, then carrying out more than a dozen structuring activities. But, given the world's prejudice against outlining, a vast silence greeted these new products. True, they were gradually incorporated into word processors and presentation packages, but the outlining modules have not been widely used until recently, when two interrelated challenges arose, which these modules help us solve.Pen&sion to make digit&hnrd copies of all or pnrt ofthis mnterinl for personal or classroom use is gnt~ted without fee provided that the copk are not made or distributed for profit or commercinl advantage. the copyri&t notice, the title ofthe publication and its date appear, ad notice is .&en thnt copyri&t is by permission ofthe ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists. requires specific permission md/or fee. SIGDOC Snowbird Ufah UX4Many of us face the challenge of integrating vast amounts of information-many documents, bits and pieces of questions and answers, bug reports, notes, email chunks-mto information CD-ROMs and Web sites. We need to put together the tables of content or menu systems, to clarify the structure so users can navigate confidently, and to identify potential links by category not just by guess and by gosh. And, as we develop the structure-and then revise it next week as more information comes pouring in-we must often work with representatives of other departments, subsidiary companies, partner corporations. We find ourselves having to collaborate on the structure. In such circumstances, I recommend you consider using the electronic outlining module in your word processor, possibly for the first time.Outlining sofbvare arrives Several computer programs offer us the ability to create outlines electronically. The original dedicated outliners like More@ have given way to outlining modules within word processors like Microsoft Word@ and Core1 Word Perfect@, within the word-processing module of an integrated package (ClarisWorks@), in presentati...

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Plain Style and Scientific Style: The Influence of the Puritan Plain Style Sermon on Early American Science Writers

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Ideas About the English Language in Early Technical Writing Textbooks

Ideas About the English Language in Early Technical Writing Textbooks

History and the study of technical communication in Canada and the United States

How electronic outlining can help you create online materials

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