What is Simplified Technical English?

and how it can help you improve your writing through increased consistency, localization costs and quality, and content design systems.

Let’s face it, Simplified Technical English (STE) can be boring. As a controlled language with a limited vocabulary and restricted writing rules, the ASD-STE100 document has a steep learning curve and limited scope for creativity. Although possible in theory, STE isn’t an easy language to learn through self-study. Authors can spend their entire career writing technical documents in STE and never fully grasp it. STE can be a headache at best; impossible at worst.

I’m one of the rare technical authors who enjoys it.

I started my career in the aviation industry, where STE is ubiquitous. Largely self-taught, I’ve run courses on the principles of STE. At this point, STE is so deeply ingrained that I can barely read a book or watch a film with subtitles without translating into STE in my head.

Origins

STE was born out of necessity. By 1979, the aviation industry had grown to a point where there were countless civil aircraft manufacturers, and even more airlines. Each manufacturer created technical manuals for their aircraft in their own native language, then translated them into English. These were then sold to airlines around the world, who became responsible for the ongoing maintenance of these aircraft. To add to the confusion:

• Individual authors had their own distinct writing styles

• Each procedure was different between aircraft models

• Often, airlines translated documentation into other languages themselves, from documents that had already been translated into English

• Maintenance manuals were poorly written and notorious for their over-complication of even the most routine tasks. Imagine trying to use a manual that confused even the people who wrote it.

Naturally, this became a concern for the airlines tasked with maintaining the aircraft. They began to push for greater writing standards across manufacturers.

To answer this demand, a collaborative project between the European Association of Aerospace Industries, Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker, and the Aerospace Industries Association of America began.

Four years later the Simplified Technical English guide was created. This guide would later become ASD Simplified Technical English, Specification ASD-STE100.

Pros and cons

English is a rich language. Ask any fan of Shakespeare or Carry On films, and they'll tell you that many words have ambiguous meanings and English grammar can be complex. Although English is the language most used for writing aircraft documentation, it's often not the native language of the end users.

For technical writers, the ability to convey complex information clearly and concisely is essential. Likewise, good writing skills using Plain English are a core business skill in any role.

Pros

STE is Plain English on steroids.

This comes with several advantages that make it perfect for use in the aviation industry.

Reduced ambiguity

STE can make text easier to read and understand, both for native and non-native speakers. Removing ambiguities reduces the risk that the end user will misunderstand the intended meaning.

Better translation

With limited vocabulary and simple sentences, STE makes translation faster and easier, whether using human or machine translation approaches.

Improved reusability

As text is written using a standard approach, it's easier to reuse across documentation.

Cons

Despite its aim to improve readability, STE isn't always suitable for general writing.

Standardized writing removes creativity

The more freedom a writer has, the more writing options they have. While this causes inconsistency among writers, it also makes writing documentation more interesting, and even in some cases, fun.

Repetitive

STE intends to be repetitive. While it improves reading comprehension and saves time on authoring, it can also make documentation dull and frustrating to use. This can hinder your efforts to make better use of your documentation, such as using it to complement your sales and marketing messages.

US English

STE is a form of English. Generally, American English is used; for authors used to writing in British English, it can be hard to adopt. However, different spellings can be used if other style guides or official directives are in place.

Despite these drawbacks, the basic principles of STE can easily be adopted into, and improve upon, existing style guides.

Use Simplified Technical English to improve your writing

ASD Simplified Technical English, Specification ASD STE-100 is split into two parts - writing rules and a dictionary. Below are three simple steps to help implement STE.

Delete non-relevant information

A lot of technical content contains additional information that's not relevant for the end user to complete a task. To remove all non-relevant information, ask yourself: Does the user need this word/information to complete the task? If the answer's no, remove it.

The above example's long-winded and difficult to read. I got tired of reading halfway through and I wrote it for this post. Think how difficult it'd be to read an entire manual written like this.

Using STE, we can strip out necessary information and condense it into easier-to-read text, such as:

This is better, but it's still not quite right. This brings us to Step 2.

Use approved words

The words you use are important. Writing with clarity and consistency is essential. What one word means to you can have a very different meaning for another reader. Take the word "should". "After the test, you should turn off the engines" can have multiple interpretations:

• Person A interprets this as something they’re supposed to do, but it’s not essential. Person A leaves the engines running for some time after the test is completed.

• Person B turns off the engines immediately after completing the test because this is something they must do.

• Person C doesn’t turn off the engines at all. The wording above implies it’s not mandatory to do so.

Technically, no one's wrong.

The above sentence is vague and open to interpretation. However, when we use the STE dictionary to reword the sentence, Person B is correct as the approved alternative of “should” is “must”.

By using the STE dictionary, we can reword the earlier example to remove any ambiguity. So our original sentence becomes:

Better, but there's still room for improvement.

Simple sentence structure

Keep your sentences short.

The recommended maximum is 20 words in a procedural sentence and 25 in a descriptive one. However, short sentences are ineffective when they contain more than one instruction or topic, particularly in a procedure.

By splitting your sentences into single points, technical content becomes easier to read. For procedures, write the verb in the imperative form.

That's much better.

What now?

STE's really useful for writing unambiguous technical content, particularly for user instructions where safety's critical. It's integral to the aviation industry, where documentation must be in English and end users may have a limited understanding of the language. It also has its advantages when using English as a base for translation, and, when done well, can reduce time to market.

Implementing STE isn't an easy task. With its stringent rules, in some ways, mastering STE is like learning a new language.

Implementation can be expensive and time-consuming. For native English writers, it can take time for writing in STE to feel natural, and the overheads to achieving compliance can be huge.

STE may also not be the best fit if you need your documentation to be engaging or interesting.

So, while fully implementing STE might not be necessary or cost-effective for some organizations, when we take STE's principles and apply them to our writing and design systems we can create help content that's easier to understand, translate, and write.