Harper: In a certain version of English, you are not allowed to use the word 'test' as a verb.
Marcus: What do you mean? How do you say 'test the system'?
Harper: You can't. You have to say 'Do the test on the system'. 'Test' is a noun. Only a noun.
Marcus: Okay, so this is some kind of... I don't know, 'English for Dummies'? Like, a super simplified, dumbed-down language for people who can't handle grammar?
Harper: That's what I thought at first, but it's actually the opposite. It's for incredibly smart people doing incredibly dangerous jobs. This is from a Wikipedia article on something called Simplified Technical English, or STE.
Marcus: Simplified Technical English. Sounds like a contradiction.
Harper: It was developed back in the 80s for the aerospace industry. You had European airlines with mechanics all over the world who weren't native English speakers. But the manuals for a Boeing jet were in American English, and the manuals for an Airbus were in British English, or written by Dutch or Italian engineers. A single word being misunderstood could be... catastrophic.
Marcus: Right. You don't want someone to 'glance at the fuel line' when the manual meant 'inspect the fuel line'.
Harper: Exactly. So they created this controlled language. It's a formal specification. It has 53 writing rules and a dictionary of only about 900 approved words.
Marcus: Wait, nine hundred words? Total? I think I've used nine hundred words in the last five minutes.
Harper: Total. And the rules are strict. Short sentences, no more than 20 words for an instruction. Active voice only. One instruction per sentence. You can only use simple tenses—past, present, future.
Marcus: This sounds like torture for a writer.
Harper: It gets better. There's a dictionary. If a word isn't in it, you can't use it. For example, the adjective 'accessible' is not approved.
Marcus: You can't say something is accessible? How do you describe a panel you can reach?
Harper: The manual suggests you rewrite the sentence. Instead of 'the panel is accessible', you have to write 'You can get access to the panel'.
Marcus: That's... wow. That's so literal. But I guess 'accessible' could mean a lot of things. Like, is it wheelchair accessible? Is the information accessible to a layperson? 'You can get access to it' is just one thing. You can physically reach it.
Harper: That's the entire philosophy. Every word has one meaning. The verb 'close' is approved, but only for two things: closing a physical object like a door, or closing a circuit. You are not allowed to 'close a meeting'.
Marcus: But that's taking it too far! You're killing the language. All the nuance, all the metaphor that makes communication efficient... it's gone. It feels like a machine language for people.
Harper: I think that's the point. They're not trying to write a novel. They're trying to make sure a bolt is tightened to the correct torque and a plane doesn't fall out of the sky. Nuance is the enemy.
Marcus: I'm not sure that follows. If you make the language too robotic, people stop paying attention. They tune it out. Sometimes you need a little color to keep the human brain engaged.
Harper: Maybe, but in this context, the procedure itself is what matters, not the prose. The article says it also makes translation way cheaper and more accurate, both for humans and machines.
Marcus: Okay, I see the logic. It's a tool for a very specific job. I just... I wouldn't want everything to be written this way. Imagine getting an email from your boss in STE.
Harper: I honestly don't know how you would even write one. But for a maintenance checklist? It's kind of genius. It forces you to think with absolute clarity.
Marcus: Fine. I concede. I don't want to live in the STE world, but I am glad the person who serviced my last flight does. It's a feature, not a bug.
Harper: Right. It's a feature. I'm Harper.
Marcus: I'm Marcus.