On 30/05/2019 11.28, Patricia Shanahan wrote:
There has been a discussion on board@, subject "[Sidebar] [D&I] Example
of exclusion from debate", about writing English in a style that will be
accessible to as many ASF participants as possible.
Tools for evaluating writing have been mentioned.
LIX index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lix_(readability_test)
Gunning-Fog: https://www.webfx.com/tools/read-able/gunning-fog.html
I have a concern about both of those. They seem to be keyed to the
sequence in which children develop written language skills in school.
Most ASF participants are educated adults, typically very sophisticated
readers and writers of at least one language. My question, especially
for those who are not completely fluent in written English, is whether
the same things give them difficulty.
I have studied French, and can read it a bit. Complex sentence structure
and multi-syllable words are no problem for me. Colloquial expressions
and cultural references, even using single syllable words and short
sentences, are much harder to understand.
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I think the biggest hurdle is once you move beyond the common words and
phrases, especially into figures of speech that are not common, or
esoteric (jinx!) words that many people might either not understand or
have trouble translating to their native tongue. My base suggestion
would be limiting ourselves, much like the Simple Wikipedia[1], to the
most common English words, unless there is a pressing reason not to.
With regards,
Daniel.
[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
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