OPTIMISING CONTENT CLARITY FOR HUMAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS

The production of clearly expressed and comprehensible technical documentation is important but challenging. Our aim in this work is to develop support for such authors in checking the likely comprehensibility of chosen forms of expression by reference to an external measure of 'likely familiarity'. The DOcumentation Support Tool (DoST) will assist in identifying words and expression forms that are likely to be unfamiliar to end users. This approach to documentation support and its underlying principles are described as steps toward optimising the clarity of technical content.