stc-jamesriver.org - Form or Content?

I’ve been involved with technical documentation and writing since I left the US Navy, ’way back in 1987. And, it seems to me that those of us who are practioners of the art or craft continue to face the question of form vs. content. This is often framed in the context that form (grammar) is more/less important [pick one] than content. This was recently revisited on the TECHWRL site in an article by Bruce Byfield, “Tech Writers, Grammar, and the Prescriptive Attitude.”

Bruce discusses grammar and what he sees as its perception amongst technical writers, or “…the nature of grammar in general.”

Apparently, many tech writers do not see grammar as a set of conventions to help them write clearly. Instead, to judge by the wording of the questions and responses, they see grammar as a set of unchanging rules that can provide definitive answers in every situation.

Bruce goes on to describe such an approach as “prescriptive” and show that rules are not unbreakable, often arbitrary and obsolete, and that these rules inhibit a writer’s ability to communicate effectively. He goes on to develop the history and historiography of grammar and published grammars, shows that famed English writers such as Shakespeare often violated the rules (although the grammar rules cited were published long after The Bard’s death), and finally shows a different approach to grammar, one known as “descriptive,” which is:

…an alternative approach to the study of language…developed by linguists. Imitating the naturalists of the Eighteenth Century, linguists began to observe the pronunciation, vocabulary, grammars, and variations of languages, and began cataloging them in ways that suggested how they related to each other…Content to observe and speculate, the early linguists developed what is now called the descriptive approach to grammar.

Bruce identifies “journalistic style guides” (presumably, publications such as the Chicago Manual of Style) as descriptive grammars that writers can use to help them. Overall, Bruce asserts, writers using the descriptive approach to grammar “[decide] for themselves what helps their documents to achieve their purposes.” In this context, he writes, prescriptive grammars (such as Webster’s and, maybe, The Elements of Style?) are useful “…for teaching English as a second language.”

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