Sentence Structure/Style

Complex sentences

Long and complicated sentences are hard to comprehend – especially if the author tries to include as much information as possible in one sentence. It is much more useful to write concisely and to give only one conclusion per sentence, particularly in instructions.

Nominal writing style

Nominal writing style is characterized by the predominant use of nouns (e.g. "etwas zur Ausführung bringen"). This writing style is very characteristic for German technical texts, but translators of different native languages often have problems to understand such texts. These difficulties exist due to the rather meaningless verbs which are used with the nouns, e.g. "durchführen", "vornehmen" or "ausführen". The use of a verb-oriented writing style with meaningful verbs is therefore favorable.

• Noun-oriented: "Einbau des Motors vornehmen" ("Carry out the installation of the motor")
• Verb-oriented: "Motor einbauen" ("Install motor")

Passive voice

Passive constructions should be avoided as they, too, can lead to misinterpretation of the sentence. The relevant agent is often not mentioned in passive constructions, for some languages however it is necessary to know the agent for the correct translation.

• "The operation is monitored." – who/what monitors the operation?
• "Data is stored for maintenance purpose." – where is the data stored?