If you’re rootin’ around for examples of bad how-to writing, look no further than your kitchen. Chances are any cookbook recipe for roast chicken, braised pork, or berry cobbler bursts with bundled steps and bungled assumptions.
What do I mean? This weekend I whipped out a recipe for my husband’s favorite meal, pot roast. The ingredients:
- 3-3 1/2 arm roast, boneless
- 2 large onions, sliced
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- … and so on.
Clear enough. But plain language bolted from the kitchen during the first step, which read: “Place meat, topped with onions, in slow cooker.”
Do you see a problem? If you take the step’s meaning at face value, you’d think you should cover the meat with the sliced onions and then put it in the slow cooker. (Question: Do you know how much mass two sliced onions creates? Try balancing that on a roast the size of a small rabbit while you carry the whole production to the slow cooker. I’m sure someone has.)
What the step means is, Put the meat in the slow cooker and then cover it with the sliced onions. This is where Just Plain Karen gets Just Plain Crazy. The author didn’t even have to write the sentence this way.
Yes, I know: Any half-witted cook could figure it out. (This half-witted cook did.) And, to all those cookbook editors out there who yelp about space constraints, I get it. But in this case, writing the sentence clearly wouldn’t add a smidgen to the page layout. Let’s try “Place meat in slow cooker. Top with onions.” Same words, different order. And one less punctuation mark.
Chefs aren’t professional writers. But as a home cook who still relies on recipes now and again, I’d be bowled over by just pinch of consideration for my inexperience.
Karen Field Carroll is a senior technical writer, author, and plain language advocate. She and her husband live in Arizona with their German shepherd, Gunther, and their cat, Callie. Visit her blog at http://www.write2help.com.