Cheers to precision in Technical writing
From Section 13.1 of the IEEE standards style manual:
- The word shall is used to indicate mandatory requirements strictly to be followed in order to conform to the standard and from which no deviation is permitted (shall equals is required to).
- The use of the word must is deprecated and shall not be used when stating mandatory requirements; must is used only to describe unavoidable situations.
- The use of the word will is deprecated and shall not be used when stating mandatory requirements; will is only used in statements of fact.
- The word should is used to indicate that among several possibilities one is recommended as particularly suitable, without mentioning or excluding others; or that a certain course of action is preferred but not necessarily required; or that (in the negative form) a certain course of action is deprecated but not prohibited (should equals is recommended that).
- The word may is used to indicate a course of action permissible within the limits of the standard (may equals is permitted).
- The word can is used for statements of possibility and capability, whether material, physical, or causal (can equals is able to)
posted by Unknown @ 7:21 AM
3 Comments:
Writting a paper to get published in IEEE...good..
However, your this blog makes me remember of my patent writing days. Man..There was not only must and will and shalls..But also Cans, Mays, The, and comprise and consist and what not. Those were the days when I started understanding linguistics..and still keep trying to understand the origin of words, but more in Hindi...
Copy pasting from Prof. Koopman's slide at Carnegie-Mellon..
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(Shall/Should are universal; the rest are merely my suggestions)
Behaviors/Constraints:
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• Shall = system has to do it 100% of the time unless specifically excepted
• Should = desirable that system does it whenever reasonable to do so
• Can = system can do something, but no particular incentive to implement
User Actions:
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• Must = user has to do this (same as “shall”, except for user, not computer)
• May = user can exhibit this behavior, but does not have to
Environment words:
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• Will = designer can count on environment being this way
• Might = designer has to accommodate situation, but can’t count on it
Change risk:
-----------------
• Expected to = this area is likely to changed
• Could = this area is something that could change, but might not
Wow!!! me being a tech writer din't know some of them...glad ppl follow this stuff...better writing makes life easy always...
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