Vicki Hollett

Technical manuals are clear, direct and precise, right? The content is factual. There’s going to be none of the pussy footing around and ambiguity that we’d associate with the ‘polite’ stuff that folks (like me)  usually write about, right?

There’s a great research paper here on ‘simple English’ that illustrates just how wrong these assumptions are.

Operating manuals contain a large number modals verbs

You must do an inspection of all the tubes

The handle should be folded inside the stabilizer trim

‘Should’ differs from ‘must’ in terms of the expectation of compliance – how confident we feel that it’s going to happen.

You must inspect it (and I think you will because I have told you to)

You should inspect it (It’s the right thing to do but perhaps you won’t)

And then there are some more ‘fuzzy’ modals like ‘may’ and ‘can’.

Use of long range cruise may be appropriate

Mercury vapors can be toxic

Something interesting about ‘may’: if I say you may do something, it also implies you may not. It suggests that I am not fully committed to the instruction, so if it turns out that it wasn’t appropriate to use long range cruise, I can’t be held responsible. And there’s a similar lack of commitment if I say ‘can’. In some way, I’m less responsible for the outcome.

The language of technical manuals aspires to be plain, straightforward English, so we might expect that all manuals would be similar in their use of these modals – irrespective of their audience.

They’re not. The study shows that operations manuals written for high status pilots, have fewer uses of ‘must’ and many more uses of ‘should’, ‘may’ and ‘can’. In repair manuals written for lower status technicians, there are more uses of ‘must’.

Why?

Like the authors of this study, I reckon that it’s about status. I can’t see another sensible explanation for the disparity. We might like to imagine that technical language is socially neutral and free of fuzziness, but in practice, that’s not the case. Writers of manuals attend to politeness issues – like the rest of the human race – and if they are writing in Anglo-English, they will attend to a social requirement to pretend like the other person has a choice.

And I’m not suggesting that this is good practice or bad practice. I’m just saying it exists. And I think that if these politeness issues are there, we need to address them and teach them – to everyone, including (and maybe especially) our techie students. All thoughts welcome, so please chip in if you have ideas on this.

Other postings related to this that you might be interested in:

• Crew resource management
• Whimpish imperatives

It’s 1970. You’re the first officer on board an aeroplane and your captain has just made a lousy decision. What’ll you do? Follow your orders or speak up?

It wasn’t an easy choice back then. Captains were expected to be decisive, take charge and command. Here’s an extract from an airline’s procedure book from that era:

‘All crewmembers must realize that the captain is in complete command of the airplane and his orders are to be obeyed, even though they may be at variance with written instruction…’

I guess the merit of the system was everyone knew who was boss. But what if the captain’s decisions were wrong? John Wayne had had a different approach, but it had never caught on:

But there’s a very serious side to this. A 1979 NASA safety workshop reviewed a series of crashes and concluded that many resulted from failures in interpersonal communication, leadership and decision making in the cockpit. Had captains used all the resources available to them and sought and listened to input from their crew, more than 70% of the crashes could have been avoided. Airlines began to acknowledge that:

 …although pilots were technically competent, their people skills were deficient.

It took a while for it to become mandatory, but training in cockpit resource management – the human factor in aviation – was born. It has since been expanded to include everyone in the crew, and more.

There’s information about the communication aspects of the training on several sites, like this one. Some of the issues it covers are –  wow – powerful. I’m struck by the importance it lays on relationships – so encouraging others to talk and listening to them, and not ignoring their feelings or ideas. Politeness issues matter.

And as for John Wayne – well, he was ahead of his time in challenging his captain, but his people skills would be questionable today. A respectful communication style is vital.