The AK2 coverage of English-language writing 'standards' will focus on the following points:

• An overview of general English-language 'standards' worldwide, including those of layout and punctuation within and between the major varieties of World English;

• An overview of 'standards' used within the English Section;

• The background of changing layout standards as influenced by technology development;

• The need for language professionals to be able to control the technologies they use to convey information to their clients (see examples one [PDF], and two [PDF]);

• The need for language professionals to be able to advise employers or clients on different language 'standards' and, where possible, to select the appropriate layout/format 'standard' in their international English communication (see examples [PDF]);

• The awareness that there are few absolute 'standards', and that one must be aware of what is appropriate in context regardless of what 'standard references' may claim . . .

Brief Overview of 'Technology' Influences on Writing 'Standards'

A 'standard' as such is simply an agreed way of defining procedures, measurements, styles, etc., within a certain community of people. The objective is to produce a unity of similar expression in order to clarify communication. All of us know several standards for various measurements (Centigrade vs Fahrenheit, Metric vs Avoirdupois, DIN vs ASA [as in ASA400/DIN27 color film], etc.).

There are also standards for language representation, including paragraphing styles, indentations, and rules for how to represent 'marked' elements (boldface, italics, etc.) in formal texts.

Several examples of changes in former standards may be useful as a guide for how technologies (in the broad sense) will continue to influence the way we write things.

Paragraphing 'Standards' from Quill Pen to Word Processor

In former days of hand-penned manuscripts, the script was often large and characters, line length, etc., relatively uneven. To compensate, paragraph indentations and separations were exaggerated, in order to make the divisions of logical thought more clear to readers.

 

In the example at left above, notice not only the lengthy indentation, but also the use of larger-sized letters to start each paragraph, as a means of more quickly distinguishing between the paragraphs. In the example at right above, the script itself is more regular, but very generous indentations are still used to separate paragraphs.

When handwritten manuscripts started to be replaced by manual typewriters, the inexactness of handwriting was no longer an issue. Typewriters only produced one typeface in one size. Thus the exaggerated indentations needed for clarity in handwritten manuscripts were reduced to a new standard, the "5-space indentation." As the keys of early typewriters were all equally-sized, however, there were often awkward spaces between words and characters that had not been a problem with handscript. These are still a problem with "monospace" fonts, as contrasted in the following with "proportional" fonts:

(In Courier monospace characters, size 3)
• "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." -- vs.
• "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." (Times proportional, size 3)
• "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." (Arial proportional, size 3)

Notice the difference above in the length and clarity of the quoted sentences, depending on whether a proportional font was used instead of a monospace font, and also whether the Arial font was used instead of the Times Roman font. While proportional fonts may differ in their face and size, all use 'kerning' and 'ligatures' to make the text more clear by removing un-needed spacing.