RE: American Technical Writing Style?

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Cedric Simard [mailto:cedricns -at- hotmail -dot- com] asked:
[...]
> - Are there other aspects not mentioned in the above list that are of 
> crucial importance for an American readership?
> - When planning for internationalization, is it important to 
> keep two sets 
> of documents: one targeted for the American market, and 
> another one target 
> for an international audience?
> - How does an average American reader react when he reads a technical 
> document written in British English? Can this aspect be of 
> prime importance 
> for business issues?

I'm not American, but I live next to some...  :-)

So, if you care, here are some thoughts.

Canadians don't care which way you spell words, 
cuz we are accustomed to seeing both. That may 
be changing, as British influence continues to 
decline, here. But we're familiar with addressing 
Americans in print.

You have two different issues to consider.  
In the short term, any halfways intelligent 
American reader will have not the slightest bit of 
trouble understanding your Brit-English document, 
and will be minimally distracted by the quaint 
differences.  In a technical document, there won't 
be all that many (see below for exceptions).

However, for any ongoing market penetration, you are 
also dealing with the political animals. That means, 
you can expect demands to:

a) speak/write American and 
b) eat the extra cost.

C. Crowley had the right idea in pointing out that 
many Americans tend to assume that anything with a 
British "accent" is likely to indicate high quality.
That's actually an odd reaction considering 

a) soccer hooligans and
b) decades of disconcerting experience with British 
   automotive electrical systems...  :-)

So, what you have is a largely positive association 
for anything that "sounds" like it was written by an 
educated Brit.  In many marketing situations, I'd 
opine that it might be advantageous to LEAVE it looking 
and sounding British.  That'll remain especially true 
if Britain follows through on Tony Blair's recent 
drum-beating. 

In more technical publications, I think it's less important.
As long as units of measure are clear to the reader, then 
the language and stylistic differences will have slight 
impact.  Exceptions would be where the entire product 
revolves around words that differ between the counties. 
So, if you are selling and documenting elevators (those 
boxes that move people and freight from floor to floor 
in multi-story buildings, you don't want your marketing 
OR your technical docs to refer to the product as a lift.
Similarly, if you are selling "Smythe's Continuous Footpath 
Laying Equipment"... you might want to re-work with the 
word "sidewalk" in there somewhere.

Also, keep in mind the old adage that it's always easier 
to ask forgiveness than to get permission. So, while you 
may easily get away with shipping Brit-English docs to 
Americans, thus saving big "translation" bucks, if you 
ASK a customer what to do, they'll most likely demand 
that you translate for their market.

OK, so my tonque may have been ever-so-slightly tucked 
in my cheek, but I think the main point is that you  
need to know your audience.  The very fact that you 
asked the questions indicates that you realize this, 
but the fact that you wanted to keep question and answer 
on a general level, rather indicates that you haven't 
quite accepted the realization.

The answer, in a single American State and town might 
differ depending on what products you are selling. 
I'd worry if I were trying to document a coin-sorter, 
for example.  Chicken plucker? No problem. 
Maize-husker?  Problem.  DVD player?  Hmm. If your 
product and your document give equal emphasis to 
NTSC, PAL, etc. and to the various DVD encoding regions... 
and don't mention any particular movies, music, etc., 
then maybe no problem.   Oh, but wait... do you make 
electrical reference to "earth" or "ground"... well, you 
can probably get away with that one. Neve mind.     
      And like that.

Cheers,

/kevin (in Ottawa, ONtario, Canada)



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