LITTLE WORDS - COMMENTARY

Because they may interpret writing too narrowly as a means of displayi ng data, rather than as communication, some technical professionals pr oduce documents exhibiting particular writing faults. For example, the y may not write with a full consciousness of words' meanings in contex t, or they may fail to assess readers' knowledge levels accurately. Ad ditionally, they may write too sequentially, forget to include clear r eferences, or fail to use vivid language in their reports. Although al l these errors derive from shared underlying attitudes towards languag e, the first evidence a reader is likely to encounter that something h as gone wrong in a document is a misuse of such little words as ''the, '' ''this,'' ''with,'' ''is,'' ''have,'' and ''then.''