Chapter 5 — Achieving a Readable Style

Chapter 5 of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information, 9th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1997), presents strategies for achieving a readable writing style. Accompanying the textbook, this chapter of the online instructor manual provides the following:

Chapter Objectives

• Know some techniques for making paragraphs better developed and more readable.

• Know some techniques for making sentences clear and succinct.

• Understand how to control word choice; ensure specific, consistent, and appropriate words.

• Understand how to apply these writing-style considerations at the revision phase in a writing project.

A chapter like this one is a wonderful way to get students on your side and headed in the same direction with you. You have a common enemy—wordy, pompous, bureaucratic writing. And the focus is not grammar and usage rules, which for some students is just so much hair-splitting. You can point out that most of the material in chapter 5 has nothing to do with grammatical correctness at all.

For these reasons, students usually get intrigued with a chapter like this one on writing-style problems. Instead of merely being told to write more clearly and succinctly, this chapter shows students specific stylistic problems that hinder that goal. They learn how to spot these kinds of problems and how to fix them.

A good time in the semester to use this chapter is that period in which your students are hard at work on the technical report. You can't saddle them with any additional out-of-class work. Have them read this chapter and conduct several in-class workshops on writing style.

As mentioned previously, this chapter is a good one for in-class workshops. It's a good way to keep students active, focused, and learning while they are working on a large report project outside of class.

1. Give the initial quiz. Try giving the quiz at the beginning of your unit on readable style. It's a nice springboard into discussion of key aspects of this chapter. When students have completed the quiz, you can go through the answers with them.

2. Revise paragraphs with weak or absent central statements, paragraphs with weak transitions, and overly long paragraphs. It's easy enough to develop problem paragraphs by yanking out the central statement and most of the transitions out of well-written paragraphs with interesting content. Have students work over these paragraphs on their own, in teams, or with the entire class.

3. Revise paragraphs to include lists and tables. Find excerpts with lists and rewrite them as straight-text paragraphs. Find excerpts with simple, informal tables and rewrite them as straight-text paragraphs. Have your students reformat these paragraphs back into list and tables.

4. Revise sentences with overly long openers, overly long interrupters, and sentences that are just too long. If you have a perverse streak, you can rewrite sentences so that they contain these characteristics. Also, you can now visit the websites of many state and federal agencies and find plenty of text that meets all of these qualifications. Have your students work on these kinds of sentences on their own, in teams, or with the entire class.

5. Revise sentences with excessive noun strings, ineffective nominalizations, and bad passive-voice constructions. Collect sentences with these characteristics and have your students revise them. (Once again, state- and federal-agency websites are good sources for this sort of material.)

6. Declare an opposite day. For fun, have students rewrite good, straightforward sentences with the sentence-style problems covered in this chapter. Have them rewrite active voice to passive voice; jam nouns together in long noun strings; nominalize the action right of the sentences; begin with interminable openers; and interrupt the subject and verb with huge modifiers.

7. Hold a bureaucrat face-off (or) bureaucrat show-down. If it's not in poor taste, consider having the bureaucratic prose equivalent of the pun-off. With a revolving panel of student judges and student contestants, act as master of ceremonies and read out perfectly good sentences and give contestants a couple of minutes to rewrite these sentences in bureaucratese.

Here are some discussion questions related to this chapter:

The Paragraph (pages 92-95)

• Is a writer's attention to the length, structure, and order paragraphs a reflection of concern for readers or for logical presentation?
• How do paragraph length and structure affect writing for different kinds of readers? For study and learning? For skimming?

Lists and Tables (pages 95-96)

• In what ways are lists and tables an element of style? How do they help people read?
• Where do they usefully appear in documents? How can writers usefully introduce them?

Clear Sentence Structure (pages 96-105)

• Where on campus do you see the clearest and best writing? Which of the patterns of clear sentence style do you see there? What exactly are they?
• Does clear and simple writing mean simplemindedness or that readers are unintelligent or unmotivated?

Specific Words (pages 105-106)

• What examples of unclear and vague wording have you seen?
• What are the practical effects on readers?

Pomposity (pages 106-109)

• In what ways is pomposity (or "flowery language") intended to impress readers?
• Where have you seen it? What impression does it make? Is it professional in tone?

Choosing a Style for International Readers (pages 111-112)

• What kinds of language could mislead international readers? In English? In translation?
• What kinds of assumptions about tone, ease of use, gender, and humor could interfere with an effective style for international readers?

Here are some ideas for journal writing in your technical communication courses:

The Paragraph (pages 93-95)

• What are the qualities of paragraphs you have found easy to read and to follow?
• What are the length and order of paragraphs in your own writing?
• What do your findings say about your ability to chunk and structure information for readers? Is this usually a consideration in college writing assignments?

Lists and Tables (pages 95-96)

• Have you used tables and lists in your writing to simplify ideas? How did they help?
• What textbooks have you read that use this strategy?
• In what ways do charts and lists help you read, skim, and study?

Clear Sentence Structure (pages 96-105)

• Examine the patterns and length of sentences in a college paper you have written.
• In what ways do your sentences present a clear order?
• How long is too long? How many openers do you use? Noun strings? Passive verbs?
• What do your findings say about your habits as a writer?

Specific Words (pages 105-6)

• What kinds of phrasing have you seen that hide meaning rather than present it?
• Where does such writing appear? How does it make you feel as a reader?

Pomposity (pages 106-109)

• Where have you seen pompous writing?
• What does pomposity say about people who use it? Is such writing intended to be impressive? Does it work?

Choosing a Style for International Readers (pages 111-112)

• What examples of bad writing from translation have you seen?
• How do these examples reflect poor understanding of cultural as well as language conventions? How useful and clear were they to you?

As mentioned earlier, this chapter is ideal for the change-of-pace, workshop-style unit that you can conduct when your students are hard at work on the formal report. Although out-of-class writing projects are less appropriate for this chapter, here are a couple of ideas, including ideas for collaborative projects:

1. Write a memo on an example of bad writing. Have your students find a short excerpt containing stylistically bad writing, writing that illustrates the ideas discussed in this chapter. Have them write a memo in which they identify and discuss these problems, and then have them rewrite the excerpt. If some students don't know where to start, suggest that they visit the web sites of state and federal agencies where they can find text meeting these qualifications.

   To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:

   • Manager. Locates an example of bad writing, distributes it to team members, plans meetings, establishes a timetable for activities.
     
   • Facilitator. Conducts a meeting in which team members discuss their responses to the piece of writing.
     
   • Scribe. Takes notes of the discussion.
     
   • Editor. Compiles the responses and acts on the group's response to revise.
     
   • Facilitator. Conducts a final meeting in which team members discuss their responses to the revision.

2. Rewrite good text as bad. Use the idea in item 6 in the workshop activities above. Have your students take perfectly good, straightforward text and inject all manner of the stylistic problems covered in chapter 5.

   To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:

   • Manager. Locates an example of good writing, distributes it to team members, plans meetings, establishes a timetable for activities.
     
   • Facilitator. Conducts a meeting in which team members discuss their responses to the piece of writing.
     
   • Scribe. Takes notes of the discussion.
     
   • Editor. Compiles the responses and acts on the group's response to revise good writing into bad.
     
   • Facilitator. Conducts a final meeting in which team members discuss their responses to the revision.

The following point summaries focus on key points in this chapter of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information: