Book Reviews

The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market
978-1-59994-657-3



"John R. Kohl's masterpiece, The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market, is an indispensable and thoroughly usable set of recommendations and examples. By implementing the appropriate suggestions, every technical writer can now create translatable text that can be better understood by humans and better processed by machines. Terrific work."

Leif Sonstenes
Director Sales and Marketing
Locatech GmbH


"This guide is essential for anyone who creates technical content for global audiences. John Kohl has developed a resource that should be required reading for any manager, technical communicator, or editor involved with content that will be translated for or read by international audiences. As a technical communicator working overseas, I have spent dozens of hours creating guidance for writers who develop global content. With the publication of this book, I now have a thorough, go-to reference that covers all the issues of developing global content that the other style guides do not. This text will be put to use immediately to help my writers create and improve content for translation and publication throughout the world."

Eddie Hollon
Technical Communicator
Hansem EZUserGuides, Inc.


"I was very excited when I was approached to review The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market. I was even more excited when it arrived and lived up to my hopes. The guide is both comprehensive and succinct, and best of all, is full of practical examples showing text before and after it has been disambiguated. That means there finally is the definitive resource that has been lacking in the field of writing and editing for an international audience."

Wendalyn Nichols
Editor of Copyediting newsletter and editorial trainer


"I am amazed by the depth of the analysis and the quality of the examples. I cannot begin to imagine the number of hours required to present such an exhaustive and detailed study.

Some things that I particularly like include the attention to non-native speakers reading in English, the emphasis on the importance of syntactic cues, and the research presented in the syntactic cues appendix. I greatly appreciate having such an abundance of references identified for me."

Susan Ledford
Master Teacher
Technical Editor


"Backed by solid research and practical industry experience, Kohl's book is a useful, accessible guide with a common sense approach to Global English. I recommend it as a valuable resource to all globalization professionals."

Bev Corwin
Enso Company Ltd


"This book addresses the growing awareness that technical documents must reach a wider audience than native English speakers: those who read a translated version of the documents and those for whom English is a second language.

John Kohl's discursive style is informative and instructive, without being labor intensive or didactic. His flowcharts on revising noun phrases and his discussions on the technicalities of machine translation and the benefits of syntactic cues are presented in an easy-to-understand manner.

The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market is definitely a "must-have" for anyone who writes for international audiences."

Layla A. Matthew
Technical Editor