Skip to main content

6 Things to eliminate cultural slang in English documents

Tips for writing or enhancing formal documents : From my personal observations.

English is a universal language and can vary quite a bit among different cultures. Here are a few styles that I have seen in documents written by Indian authors and some tips on make your document eliminate those cultural slangs.

Certain words are used more commonly in speaking where the body language of the speaker assists in conveying the real intention of the words usage. A tip would be write as you normally would and check for such common words and see if it is the right word for the sentence.

Examples below. 

Good: Check if the word good accurately describe the situation that you are trying to convey. It is common to use the term good, but it might not have the accuracy in conveying the message. E.g. with good training you might have meant that the training was intensive of fast paced or effective or thorough, however the reader will not get the same meaning. 

Small: Similar to the word good above.

Also:  Is a word used a lot in certain demography while speaking. Check if this word is really necessary in the sentence. 

The:  Is a word used a lot in certain demography while speaking. Check if this word is really necessary in the sentence.

Helping / assisting: e.g. I received some assistance in the work. Here since the writer was the one who was involved in the work, he/she knows the type of assistance received however the reader could take it in either way.  You could have received assistance in terms of guidance or effort. By guidance I mean how to do the work. By effort I mean since there was lot of work you received another helping hand and you probably even provided guidance to the helper in getting the task completed.

The same: Used a lot in India instead of "the (item, etc.) described above"

Cultural

Some of the words are more due to usage differences in different cultures. E.g. The term company a lot in India instead of employer which is a more common and accepted usage in Australia.  

This is also evident sometimes in the way some ideas are written. Some cultures are not used to writing in a definitive way. One example is “I hope this experience gave me an insight into…” whereas the intention was to convey “This experience gave me an insight into…” the former sometimes written in a way of saying that I have the knowledge in a modest way. It is advised to be definitive in terms of what you are conveying. A yes, no or don’t know. 

Feel free to add your comments in case you have observed similar words or phrases and I can add to the list.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SharePoint 2013 workflow : The server was unable to process the request

Here, I received another SharePoint 2013 workflow error. This time the workflow was not able to send emails and the following error was being shown Retrying last request. Next attempt scheduled in less than one minute. Details of last request: HTTP Unauthorized to http://sitename/_vti_bin/client.svc/web/lists/getbyid(guid'guid') Correlation Id: id Instance Id: id Fortunately I came across this post which gave me the answer http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/89101/failed-to-retrieve-the-com-class-factory-for-component-with-clsid-sp-sprequest Solution 1: In InetMgr, go to advanced settings for Security Token Service Application Pool and change "Load User Profile" to true. Recycle application pool. Reason 2 and Solution 2 : There could be another reason for this error. The workflow authentication can fail if the user executing the workflow (this will be the user initiating the workflow) is given permission through active directory group and the co

OWA not working after security update

Office web apps for SharePoint 2013 not working after security updates / server patching. After installation of the following security patches, OWA stopped working there by causing issues with SharePoint 2013. Details of ULS logs are provided below. FarmStateReplicator.exe (0x0CD8) Office Web Apps Farm State Error when trying to connect to Farm State Manager service: System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException: There was no endpoint listening at http:// /farmstatemanager/FarmStateManager.svc that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details. ---> System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.DoConnect(EndPoint endPointSnapshot, SocketAddress socketAddress) at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal

BCS Error - Access denied by Business Data Connectivity

I recently came across this error while attempting to configure an external content type in SharePoint 2013. The error message showed Access denied by Business Data Connectivity. On verifying the ULS logs the found errors as given in the table beneath the post Found the following support article, but it did not like the problem that I was having at hand. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686411 Then I came across this comment on the link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4168309/sharepoint-bcs-sss-help-needed This happens because you have not set access on the BCS object that you created. Go into Central Administration and select your External Content Type or other object and select Set Permissions from the dropdown. Your authentication is working or you would not be able to save the object you created to the metadata store. You now need to tell the metadata store who has access to the objects you created in BCS.  It worked like a charm. Updating in my blog post so that