good English

Supervision report to Dr Max Wheeler, L&EL, from Paul Danon, research student

We met today (14 November 2006) in your office from 16:00 till 17:15. This was my first supervision since I began the best part of two years’ intermission. Let me take this opportunity to say how pleased I am to be back at Sussex and, particularly, in L&EL.

I presented at yesterday’s Research on Languages and Linguistics Seminar and the audience was very gracious and appreciative. I got two pieces of fan-mail! Ms Carol O’Neal wrote: “Many congratulations on your excellent and most entertaining seminar.” Mr Nicholas Padmore wrote: “I attended your fantastic presentation for ROLLS yesterday evening, and wanted first to congratulate you for that.” Sorry to blow my own trumpet but, as I understand it, part of this undertaking is to win the confidence of research-based colleagues.

I spoke at the meeting about work done to date and, whereas I previously presented to colleagues about my review of paper-based style-guides, this time I also included material about software which offers to improve style. Although this review-work has been useful, my confidence has not been inspired by either printed or computer-based guides. Evidence of these tools’ effectiveness is sparse. Their precepts could well be valid but, for me at least, empirical proof of such validity is needed before I publish to that effect.

Interesting input from yesterday’s meeting included the observation that the ethos of at least some of the books on style came from a can-do attitude to writing which is found in the USA. Whereas in other cultures the ability to write well may be regarded as innate, in America it is seen as a skill to be acquired. First-year American undergraduates are taught to present their ideas in writing and Dr Murphy testified to the usefulness of that. Dr Murphy suggested I contacted Dr Allison (sic) Smith of Middle Tennessee State University.

My initial wish at today’s supervision was to get down straight away to practical research, testing the style-guides’ and styleware’s prescriptions by using real language with real people. We discussed the formulation by me of a research-outline or –protocol.

However, psychology-literature includes results of tests on comprehension. Inasfar as my new approach is to look for the so-to-speak laws of nature about English style, such work should be examined. Imagine that researchers had established that active verbs really did communicate better than passives. Such a fact could join the list of real-life laws about how language worked when it worked well.

My next lines of enquiry should therefore be:

• PsycINFO
• Modern Language Association
• Google Scholar.

My keyword will be comprehension and I shall particularly look out for review-articles which sum up the state of the art on an aspect of the subject.

I shall ask Sussex faculty (including informatics personnel and/or Professor Sampson and/or Dr Bill Keller) about what rules, if any, in natural language processing apply to style. I shall also ask the companies which produce the style-software about the rules they incorporate into that software, including what those rules are and how they are identified as being valid. Also of interest will be reviews of style-software.

Today we also spoke about problems with telling writers to enforce a rule which preferred English words of Germanic origin, since many would not know about many words’ origins. We mentioned how morpheme-frequency might determine readers’ familiarity and, consequently, understandability.

Please may I report on progress in a couple of weeks’ time and might we then decide if another face-to-face meeting is desirable this term, or if we can continue to communicate by email and/or phone? Daytime telephone appointments may be feasible for me.