The Elements of International English Style

A Guide to Writing Correspondence, Reports, Technical Documents, and Internet Pages for a Global Audience

Edmond H. Weiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317457213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

This easy-to-use handbook is an essential resource for anyone who needs to write English correspondence for an international business audience. In an engaging, accessible style it integrates the theory and controversies of intercultural communication with the practical skills of writing and editing English for those who read it as a second language. The book emphasizes principles of simplicity and clarity, proper etiquette, cultural sensitivity, appropriate layout and typography, and more to increase the chances that a text prepared by a native English speaker will be better understood by a non-native speaker. It also updates traditional advice with new insights into "e-mail culture." Equally useful for students and professionals in business communication, marketing communication, and international business, The Elements of International English Style is filled with realistic examples, problems, and projects, including: 57 specific tactics to internationalize one's English; hundreds of before-and-after comparisons showing the effects of editing for an international audience; models of international correspondence; practical discussion questions and work projects; useful resources for further study, including books, articles, and websites.

1

The Language of Global Business Is International English

Business and technical documents intended for those who read English as their second language must be unusually simple, unambiguous, and literal. Ideally, they should be edited for ease of translation. They must also be free of cultural irritants and distractions. Every native speaker of English (E1) must learn to edit and revise documents meant for international readers.

A Riddle

Here’s a riddle heard on a business trip to the Middle East:

Question: If a person who speaks many languages is called multilingual and a person who speaks two languages is called bilingual, what is a person called who speaks only one language?

Answer: An American.

In the 1960s, there was much talk about “Ugly Americans”—travelers from the United States who regarded the cultures, politics, and civilizations of other countries as backward and inferior. Characteristically, ugly Americans spoke only English (the American version), and, moreover, they expected that, if they spoke loudly and slowly enough, everyone in the world would understand them.

Today, such travelers, even if they are not more enlightened, have an easier time of it. Nearly one-fourth of the people on Earth speak English well enough to perform everyday tasks and share the ideas that occur in normal conversation. But most of that group, more than a billion people, speak English as their second language, not their first. Although many people throughout the globe lament the rapid spread of English, complaining that it has displaced and obviated other languages, English has gained currency mainly as a second language, not a first. No demographic projection in any study shows that English is becoming the first language of significantly more people. In fact, the British organization charged with estimating the future of the English language predicts the opposite: that the proportion of native speakers of English (referred to in this text as E1s) in the world will continue to decline in this century and may even be overtaken in its second position by Hindi/Urdu. Indeed, in the United States, English is already losing ground to Spanish (Gradol, 2000).

Those of us who are E1s and who study the international uses of English do not expect it to replace any major language, except, perhaps, for certain specific international uses such as scientific journals. On the contrary, the purpose of this text is to remind those with the best grasp of English, who acquired that ability without the ardors of learning a second language, that they have an added responsibility when they communicate with those who read English as their second language (E2s). Nor does this text suggest that Americans—or anyone else—should be smug about knowing only English. Living well in the twenty-first century—being a good citizen and an effective professional—virtually requires us to learn at least one other language, at least well enough to make friends when we travel. Such knowledge will improve our ability to write and speak in an International English Style.

What Is International English Style?

Language researchers estimate that English is the most widely spoken language in the world. The current estimate is that about 1.5 billion people speak English well enough to use the language for business or education. Less than a third of these, however, speak English as their first language (E1); there are only about 400 million E1s in the world, and about half of them are in one country: the United States of America.

There are also about 1.5 billion speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The main difference, however, is that about two-thirds of them speak Chinese as their first language (M1) and only a third as a second language (M2).

Furthermore, for various demographic reasons, the number of E1s is declining, if not absolutely then as a proportion of the world’s population, whereas the number of E2s is growing. That is, the typical writer/ reader of English is increasingly someone who has learned it as a second language. It is projected that by the middle of the twenty-first century, most of the countries that have an official second language will have selected English as that language. Thus, in those countries that publish official documents in two languages, the second will probably be English; in those countries that require children to learn a foreign language, that language will be English; and in those countries that demand second-language competence as a condition of employment in the government or civil service, English will usually be that language. (One Chinese leader has expressed the goal that all Chinese people should learn English.)

Currently, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of school children are enrolled in compulsory or strongly recommended English courses throughout the world. These students know that not only their academic careers but their ultimate earning power will be shaped to some extent by how well they can conjugate the exasperating English verb to lay or pronounce correctly the illogically spelled says. One can also suspect that most of these students are pursuing the language reluctantly, especially in those countries where English is associated with colonialism or with controversial American foreign policy or transnational corporations.

When David Crystal calls English a “global language,” he is talking about its widespread study and use by nonnative speakers: E2s. What makes English a global language is the way it is used: to support international commerce, to unify communities with diverse languages, and to provide a lingua franca, a universal language, much as Latin became in the Middle Ages and French until the early twentieth century.

This gradual displacement of Latin and then French with English as the language of international diplomacy in the West (U.S. passports are still in English AND French) is neither the result of some organized campaign by English speakers nor the decree of some international standards organization. No rule requires that three-fourths of the world’s scientific papers are to be published in English. No world body, for example, coerced the Association Européenne de Constructeurs de Matériel Aérospatial (AECMA), a Belgian organization, to make English the official language of the world aircraft industry. Rather, English emerged as a global language in the Twentieth Century through the combined effect of American economic and military power. (In contrast, British influence was in sharp decline in the last century.)

By International English Style, I mean an approach to English that reflects an appreciation of its global uses and sensitivity to the needs of the E2 reader. Of course, not all E2s require special treatment. People with an aptitude for languages can master two or three of them, writing and speaking not only competently but beautifully in all. Some of the finest prose in English is the work of E2s, including some by writers who did not begin the study of the language until they were adults.

For the most part, however, International English will be read not by the linguistically gifted but, rather, by those tens of millions of ordinary folks who were coerced by school systems or compelled by economic necessity to learn this quirky tongue with its exotic spelling, esoteric rules of word order, and huge, synonym-filled vocabulary. Most of them, moreover, will be using an alphabet different from their own— always an immensely difficult task—and perhaps even a separate keyboard for their word processor. In addition, a good many may even resent the fact that America’s economic or military might has forced them to set aside their own language and to sacrifice their own comfort and fluency.

Imagine, for instance, how the French feel about the use of English in European websites or how they regard Algeria’s decision to make English, not French, its official second language. France is one of the few countries still policing its business communications to keep out incipient English words. Or think of a billion Indians, and their tense history with Britain, who are obliged to use English to bridge the language gaps within their linguistically diverse country or as a way to secure those controversial “outsourced” American jobs. Empathize for a moment with those who see English as a linguistic juggernaut, driving minor languages out of existence and devaluing fluency in any other tongue.

An awareness of these political and cultural frustrations is also a part of International English Style, along with the more technical concern for using words and sentences in ways that are most likely to be understood and translated correctly. In effect, whenever we write for a large E2 audience, we are writing for translation. The purpose of this text, therefore, is to offer advice to everyone who writes for E2 readers: people who read English as their second language, typically as part of their work or education.

Generally, the following pages contain lists of tactics and tips that will help the reader learn how to handle word choice, punctuation, or verb forms. These tactics follow from two broad communication precepts of International English Style:

• First, reduce the burden on the E2 reader in every way possible, but without condescending or “writing down.”

• Second, write for translation, that is, for a reader who might consult a bilingual dictionary.

Nearly all good writers and editors of business prose try to reduce the burden on their readers in order to satisfy Henry Fowler’s objective: to make the sentences understandable on one reading (Fowler, 1926). Similarly, writing well for an E2 reader generally means using the same methods and editorial principles one uses in writing for an E1 reader— only more so. That is, one should write even simpler, clearer, easier-to-read material for the E2 reader than one writes for E1s: short familiar words, short uncomplicated sentences, active and indicative verb forms. Most of the battle in communicating with E2 readers can be won by applying George Orwell’s most basic rules of style (see Orwell, 1946):

• Never use a long word where a short one will do.

• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

As in most business and technical writing, the editor should nearly always choose the more accessible arrangement of text and figures, presuming that any facet of page design or layout that taxes the abilities or attention of an E1 reader will be an even greater burden for the E2 reader.

Sometimes, however, the needs of the E2 reader mandate new rules, such as the use of words with few meanings rather than many meanings (even when they are longer words) and sometimes longer sentences with the implied or elliptical words put back in. Often, the tactics required for this kind of communication make English documents less readable and less interesting to sophisticated E1 readers. By traditional standards, a well-written International English document is sometimes not well written. For example, consider this pair of sentences:

1. Reading is hard; writing is harder.

2. Reading is difficult; writing is more difficult than reading.

By almost any standard of editing, the first version is better written than the second. It contains not only fewer words but fewer words with more than one syllable. (Most measures of readability are based on two variables: words-per-sentence and syllables-per-word.) Version 1 is plain, direct, even sl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Excerpts
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Language of Global Business Is International English
• 2. Principles of Simplicity
• 3. Principles of Clarity
• 4. Reducing Burdens
• 5. Writing for Translation
• 6. Principles of Correspondence
• 7. Principles of Cultural Adaptation
• Appendixes
• Edmond Weiss, PhD
• Index