Tom Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
I grogged what you have been writing,
and for the examples I gave more elaborate alternatives that may be better
understood by more people than the original text.
<<
ROF,L! What a glorious, albeit unintentional, demonstration of the point. I
think you mean "grokked", but I rather liked your new construction of
"grogged", redolent as it is of rum-soaked hours spent poring over the
text.
I've spent many years teaching people for whom English - and specifically
technical English - is a second language (in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur,
Bangkok, Taipei, Beijing, Jakarta, Amsterdam, Stockholm, etc.). My
experience is that these people often use technical English terms like
"distribution", "auto-detect", etc. while conversing in their primary
language, since most languages simply adopt the English terms for new
technologies and concepts (the obvious exception being French, thanks to
the Academie Francaise).
That being the case, they are more likely to immediately recognise and
process the technical terms in whatever you write, and have more trouble
with the other words, which argues in favour of a terse writing style. For
example:
"Check autoprobing of video card"
may be easier for a ESL reader than
"Confirm that the automatic detection of the system's video card during
installation was successful"
In other words, a Linux administrator in Beijing probably bandies around
the term "autoprobe" fairly often, and knows exactly what it is, but may
well be fazed by "automatic detection" or "automatic configuration". It
seems that Geekspeak travels better than beautiful prose English.
Best,
--- Les [http://www.lesbell.com.au]
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