Abstract
SINCE the lectures on which this book is based were delivered in April and May of 1947, the publication of Sir Ernest Gowers' "Plain Words" has stolen some of Prof. Kapp's thunder. There is some common ground in the two books, but Prof. Kapp is concerned with the presentation of technical information and deals with the choice and use of words only so far as they contribute to that purpose : whether or not technical terms, words are to be chosen deliberately so as to serve the technical ideal of fitness for the purpose. That is the ideal which is in Prof. Kapp's mind throughout, just as it dominated Prof. J. R. Nelson's "Writing the Technical Report", a second edition of which appeared last year. Prof. Kapp insists that the presentation of technical information demands the use of what he terms functional English-language in which words are chosen and sentences constructed so as to express the writer's meaning clearly and without ambiguity, and are as appropriate to his purpose as the units selected and used by the designer of an engineering construction. Functional English, he claims, presents facts and ideas simply and logically, but jargon is eschewed by him as firmly as by Sir Ernest Gowers or by Quiller-Couch in a lecture that few scientific writers appear to have discovered.
The Presentation of Technical Information Based on four Public Lectures given at University College, London.
By Prof. Reginald O. Kapp. Pp. xi+147. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1948.) 6s. net.
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BRIGHTMAN, R. The Presentation of Technical Information Based on four Public Lectures given at University College, London. Nature 162, 909 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162909a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162909a0