Comment by rzk
1 day ago
An interesting solution suggested in the replies (https://x.com/andrew_n_carr/status/2081534245370314816):
The fix for this is to say: only report to me in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English.
More info about it here: Simplified Technical English - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English
I was curious so I asked Claude how it would do that: https://gist.github.com/waddie/b26166eec6cf675c044c09a95a754...
I thought this bit was interesting:
> TE has no register for hedging, ownership of an opinion, or acknowledging that a reasonable person would disagree. Modality is roughly can / must / do not. […] Where a thought can't be said in STE without becoming a lie, I'd mark it and say it plainly rather than mangle it. Confidence and disagreement are the two things I'd insist on smuggling through.
I looked into it a bit more, and while it does look helpful in the first glance, it actually isn't a good fit for code. It's very aviation-terminology-focused.
A better guide would be something like Google Developer Style Guide
Or, as the Wikipedia Simplified Technical English Wikipedia mentions, use Plain English or Plain Language as non-aerospace alternatives:
> The US government's Plain English lacks the strict vocabulary restrictions of the aerospace standard, but represents an attempt at a more general writing standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English
> Modern corporations and academic organizations hire technical writers already trained to follow a simplified form of English that the layman reader can easily understand, known as plain language (PL).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_language
And so we've looped back around OP’s “plain English” phrasing.
Nice. It sounds like doing a few passes on industrial product documentation with this might be beneficial.