What Is Style?
In technical communication, style is not embellishment or ornamentation. Style is not artificial flavoring added to a document to make the content more "interesting." A few added adjectives or exclamation marks won't do much to improve your style. Good style goes beyond these kinds of superficial cosmetic changes. It involves
• choosing the right words and phrases.
• structuring sentences and paragraphs for clarity.
• using an appropriate tone.
• adding a visual sense to the text.
Two Common Styles in Technical Communication
Plain style—Plain style stresses clear wording and simple prose. It is most often used to instruct, teach, or present information. Plain style works best in documents like technical descriptions, instructions, and activity reports.
Persuasive style—There are times when you will need to influence people to accept your ideas and take action. In these situations, persuasive style allows you to add energy and vision to your writing and speaking. This style works best with proposals, letters, articles, public presentations, and some reports.
Writing Plain Sentences
Writing plainly is a skill that requires practice and concentration.
Basic Parts of a Sentence
To start, let us consider the parts of a basic sentence. A sentence in English typically has three main parts: a subject, a verb, and a comment.
Subject—What the sentence is about
Verb—What the subject is doing
Comment—What is being said about the subject
Eight Guidelines for Plain Sentences: GUIDELINE 1: THE SUBJECT OF THE SENTENCE SHOULD BE WHAT THE SENTENCE IS ABOUT. Confusion often creeps into texts when readers cannot easily identify the subjects of the sentences,GUIDELINE 2: THE SUBJECT SHOULD BE THE "DOER" IN THE SENTENCE. GUIDELINE 3: THE VERB SHOULD STATE THE ACTION, OR WHAT THE DOER IS DOING.GUIDELINE 4: THE SUBJECT OF THE SENTENCE SHOULD COME EARLY IN THE SENTENCE. Subconsciously, your readers start every sentence looking for the subject. The subject anchors the sentence, because it tells readers what the sentence is about.GUIDELINE 5: ELIMINATE NOMINALIZATIONS. Nominalizations are perfectly good verbs and adjectives that have been turned into awkward nouns.GUIDELINE 6: AVOID EXCESSIVE PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES. Prepositional phrases are necessary in writing, but they are often overused in ways that make text too long and too tedious. Prepositional phrases follow prepositions like in, of, by, about, over, and under. These phrases are used to modify nouns.GUIDELINE 7: ELIMINATE REDUNDANCY IN SENTENCES. In our efforts to get our point across, we sometimes use redundant phrasing. For example, we might write "unruly mob" as though some kinds of mobs might be orderly. Or, we might talk about "active participants" as though someone can participate without doing anything.GUIDELINE 8: WRITE SENTENCES THAT ARE "BREATHING LENGTH." You should be able to read a sentence out loud in one breath. At the end of the sentence, the period (.) signals, "Take a breath." Of course, when reading silently, readers do not actually breathe when they see a period, but they do take a mental pause at the end of each sentence. If a sentence runs on and on, it forces the readers to mentally hold their breath. By the end of an especially long sentence, they are more concerned about when the sentence is going to end than what the sentence is saying.
Creating Plain Sentences with a Computer
Computers give us an amazing ability to manipulate sentences. So, take full advantage of your machine's capabilities. First, write out your draft as you normally would not paying too much attention to the style. Then, as you revise, identify difficult sentences and follow these seven steps:
1. Identify who or what is doing something in the sentence.
2. Turn that who or what into the subject of the sentence.
3. Move the subject to an early place in the sentence.
4. Identify what the subject is doing, and move that action into the verb slot.
5. Eliminate prepositional phrases, where appropriate, by turning them into adjectives.
6. Eliminate unnecessary nominalizations and redundancies.
7. Shorten, lengthen, combine, or divide sentences to make them breathing length.
With these seven steps in mind, let us revisit sentence 1, the example of weak style earlier in this chapter:
TRANSITION SENTENCE The purpose of a transition sentence is to make a smooth bridge from the previous paragraph to the present paragraph.
By referring back to the previous paragraph or paragraphs, transition sentences provide a smoother bridge into the new paragraph.
Transition sentences are typically used when the new paragraph handles a significantly different topic than the previous paragraph. They help close the gap between the two paragraphs or redirect the discussion.
TOPIC SENTENCE The topic sentence is the claim or statement that the rest of the paragraph is going to prove or support:
n technical documents, topic sentences typically appear in the first or second sentence of each paragraph. They are placed up front in each paragraph for two reasons.
• The topic sentence sets a goal for the paragraph to reach. It tells readers the claim the writer is trying to prove. Then, the remainder of the paragraph proves that claim.
• The topic sentence is the most important sentence in any given paragraph. Since readers, especially scanning readers, tend to pay the most attention to the beginning of a paragraph, placing the topic sentence up front ensures they will read it.
sUPPORT SENTENCES. The bulk of any paragraph is typically made up of support sentences. These sentences contain examples, reasoning, facts, data, anecdotes, definitions, and descriptions.
Support sentences are used to prove the claim made in the paragraph's topic sentence.
POINT SENTENCES. Point sentences restate the paragraph's main point toward the end of the paragraph. They are used to reinforce the topic sentence by restating the paragraph's original claim in new words. Point sentences are especially useful in longer paragraphs where readers may not fully remember the claim stated at the beginning of the paragraph. They often start with transitional devices like "Therefore," "Consequently," or "In sum" to signal that the point of the paragraph is being restated.
Using the Four Types of Sentences in a Paragraph
Of these four kinds of sentences, only the topic and support sentences are needed to construct a good paragraph. Transition sentences and point sentences are useful in situations where bridges need to be made between paragraphs or specific points need to be reinforced.
Aligning Sentence Subjects in a Paragraph
Now let's discuss how you can make paragraphs plainer by weaving sentences together effectively. Have you ever read a paragraph in which each sentence seems to go off in a new direction? Have you ever run into a paragraph that actually feels "bumpy" as you read it? More than likely, the problem was a lack of alignment of the paragraph's sentence subjects. For example, consider this paragraph:
Notice how the subjects of these sentences (underlined) are not in alignment, making the paragraph seem rough to readers.
To use given/new techniques to smooth out your writing, you can look back to a previous sentence you've written to find something you can use to begin the next sentence.
When Is It Appropriate to Use Passive Voice?
Before discussing the elements of persuasive style, we should expose a writing boogeyman as a fraud. Since childhood, you have probably been warned against using passive voice. You have been told to write in active voice.
One problem with this prohibition on passive voice is that passive voice is very common in technical communication. In some scientific fields, passive voice is the standard way of writing. So, when is it appropriate to use passive voice?
Passive voice occurs when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon, so the verb is in passive voice. Active voice occurs when the subject of the sentence is doing the acting, so the verb is an action verb.
Persuasive Style
There are times when you will need to do more than simply present information clearly. You will need to influence your readers to take action or make a decision. In these situations, you should shift to persuasive style. When used properly, the persuasive style can add emphasis, energy, color, and emotion to your writing.
The following four persuasion techniques will help give your writing more impact:
• Elevate the tone.
• Use similes and analogies.
• Use metaphors.
• Change the pace.
A combination of these persuasive techniques, properly used, will make your writing more influential and vivid.
Elevate the Tone
Tone is the resonance or pitch that the readers will "hear" as they look over your document. Of course, most people read silently to themselves, but all readers have an inner voice that sounds out the words and sentences. By paying attention to tone, you can influence the readers' inner voice in ways that persuade them to read the document with a specific emotion or attitude.
Balancing Plain and Persuasive Style
When you are drafting and revising a document for style, look for appropriate places to use plain and persuasive style. Minimally, a document should use plain style. Sentences should be clear and easy to read. Your readers should not have to struggle to figure out what a sentence or paragraph is about.
Persuasive style should be used to add energy and color. It should also be used in places in the document where readers are expected to make a decision or take action. The use of tone, similes, analogies, and metaphors in strategic places should encourage readers to do what you want. You can use short or long sentences to adjust the intensity of your prose.
In the end, developing good style takes practice. At first, revising a document to make it plain and persuasive might seem difficult. Before long, though, you will start writing better sentences while drafting. You will have internalized the style guidelines presented in this chapter.
