ABSTRACT

If an excuse is needed for including a chapter on grammar in a book on writing specifications, then it must be a strange, esoteric world that writers of technical documents inhabit! Yet it would appear from many documents that such isolation is encroaching. The arguments for and against the strict application of grammatical rules are many. In these days of text messages, which have evolved their own language and code, an absence of correct grammar in a written specification would hardly appear to be a major problem so long as the text can be understood. However, the point is that the specification should not only be understood but also be interpreted consistently by different readers. The first rule of interpretation of legal documents is to take the literal meaning of the words, and that means that the specification should follow the rules of grammar. Literary education for anyone opting for sciences at school often comes to a halt at the age of 16 or earlier. Recently the situation has improved, but access to basic reminders of writing grammatically correct English is strangely difficult, although there are many good publications on style and clear writing which do not address grammar directly.