Posts Tagged ‘English’
English – How to Use "Can" and "May" Correctly in your Technical Documents
© 2010 Ugur Akinci It’s easy to remember the correct way of using “can” and “may” in your technical documents: CAN expresses the ABILITY to do something. MAY has to do with the PERMISSION to do it or the POSSIBILITY of something happening. For example: ORIGINAL: “The circuitboard can overheat.” [Of course; just like ANYTHING…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Anticipate Resistance. Eliminate it in Advance.
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing shares one very important structural feature with copy writing: anticipation of resistance. To write a good technical manual, you have to anticipate why the reader might doubt the veracity of your instructions; why they might resist it. Then, like a skilled bomb-removal expert, you have to defuse and remove…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Collective Nouns, Singular Verbs, Singular Pronouns
© 2010 Ugur Akinci There are those nouns that depict collectivities, groups. For example: a team. A horde. A couple. A series. A collection… Minority. The Olympics. United Nations. We call such words collective nouns (or collective noun phrases). Although all collective words denote a collection of individuals, they should be treated as SINGULAR words…
Read MoreHow to Write Technical Documents for an International Audience
Writing technical documents for an international audience means writing documents that translate easily to the target language, and are understood easily by the speakers of the target language. In the world we are living in, technical documents are increasingly translated from one language to another since customers of most goods and services transcend national boundaries.…
Read MoreBOOK: 101 Tips and Tutorials to Write Like a Pro!
Improve Your English Right Away Boost up your writing instantly by taking advantage of these 101 power tips provided by a Fortune 100 writer (yours truly). 126 page PDF file. Over 35,500 words. Includes hundreds of examples. —————————– This is what Bob Bly, the legendary Copy Writer, said about this book: ““Frankly, I was expecting…
Read MoreHow to Split and Simplify Your Complex Sentences
© 2009 Ugur Akinci Here is a sure-fire method to split your long sentences into shorter and more easily understandable ones: Split your sentences at conjunctions like “and”, “or”, “while”, “however”, “although” etc. Those are the connection points where one clause is linked to another. By breaking your clauses apart you can develop a simpler…
Read MoreHow to Eliminate Redundant Words from Your Writing
© 2009-2010 Ugur Akinci Repeating an idea has its rightful place in article writing, essays, or journalistic writing. Even if you’re writing a technical article for engineers and scientists it pays to express the main idea once in the header (a must), then in the sub-header, another time in the opening paragraph, and lastly for…
Read MoreEssay Writing for ESL/EFL Students
This informative video was done with ESL/EFL students in mind but I bet even the native speakers can benefit from the structured tutoring that it provides…
Read More"Me" or "I"? A Simple Method to Use the Correct Pronoun
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Sometimes people are confused whether to use “me” or “I” in a sentence. For example, which is correct: “Me and Jimmy watched a movie”… or “I and Jimmy watched a movie”? First off, it always sounds better if you cite the other person FIRST, as in “Jimmy and me…” or “Jimmy…
Read MoreThe Importance of Using the Right Words
© 2009 Ugur Akinci Using the right words is so critical in communications in general and technical writing in particular. The wrong word can take the conversation to a totally unintended direction, sometimes with humorous and other times with not-so-humorous results. Here is an example… As I was jogging the other day I was listening…
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