Participation Supplement 3
Today we discussed prose and how to revise sentences from a technical communication standpoint. It was very fascinating, and challenging. I have never implemented prose writing and I now have a new appreciation for people who are exceptional at it. Another thing we discussed was plain language. This seems like a common sense issue type of thing, but it makes sense. You need to be aware of your audience and avoid jargon that is so technical that they wouldn’t understand. It’s okay to use jargon around people who will understand it, for example, say you are a hematologist and are working with a team of molecular biologist and you bring up “The deformation of cultured red blood cells . . .”, then this would be a good time and place to use those words. However, if you are a hematologist and you need to explain to a patient about this topic, you would want to first give an explanation that they would understand and then say something like “ . . . and we call that a deformation of cultured red blood cells in the medical world.” This would be acceptable. Another interesting topic we saw was that of doublespeak. I feel like politicians would use doublespeak frequently. I mean, it’s safe to assume that most people are guilty of doublespeak. This does kind of go back to my last post about how I don’t think it's okay to lie or bend the truth. Doublespeak could definitely be the vessel to encourage the behaviour of telling only a half-truth. So we need to be careful when implementing doublespeak. With this being said, it can have it’s benefits and place in technical writing, as long as you are not deceiving the audience (which is tecnically the definition, so I am talking about a good sort of doublespeak which may have it’s own word). For example, if you are being vague to keep a fact hidden in order to create more shock and awe when you reveal that hidden thing later on in the writing. I can see how it can be useful but I also understand that it should be avoided in m