Managing the Documentation Maze: Answers to Questions You Didn't Even Know to Ask

CHAPTER 10

CONSISTENCY AND READABILITY IN DOCUMENTS

INTRODUCTION

An integral part of document management is the generation of the documents themselves. Because the therapeutic products industry must produce massive amounts of documentation, people tasked with writing may feel pressured because they do not have a grasp of what goes into good writing and how to control the language itself. The industry is truly multicultural and global, so for many people English is a second language. For many others, English may be the first language, but they don't like to write, or lack the skills to do so effectively. Many native English speakers chose science, medicine, engineering, or even business as career paths because they didn't want to be writers. And here they are, tasked with writing, which is ironically a critical skill for this industry. This chapter addresses writing challenges in the industry and answers the following questions.

1. Why is there so much emphasis on documentation?
2. Why is English the preferred language for the health-care industry?
3. What kind of language is English?
4. Why are so many of the words in English the same as the words in the European languages?
5. What is the correct English form for submissions to the United States versus Europe?
6. Why does European English often use different spelling than the US English?
7. Since there are many words in American English that other ...