• The protective film must be removed from the sandwich panels no later than 2 months after manufacture (or after a maximum of 2 week's ex­posure to the elements).

• When a user creates an account on the community website, a list of available neighbourhoods is displayed on the welcome page.

• If the cycling device triggers an alarm, mount the unit in a different location.

Example 12: General terms with specialized meanings

Facts and specifications

Setting aside issues of language for a moment, the whole point of technical documentation is to communicate something. There is, however, a limit to what can be expressed in smooth, clear prose. Sometimes the only way to convey information effectively is to present bare facts and figures, whether it is incor­porated into a sentence, presented as a bullet point in a list or in a table without any textual "padding".

• The recommended dose is between 50 and 80 mg per litre of water.

• Pack Height: max. 710 mm

Pack Width: 1010 mm for construction widths of 200-300 mm Pack Length: max. 14.0 m Pack Weight: 4.01 Example 13: Extract from list of technical specifications

In a scientific text, we also find hard facts, although the structural and linguistic style of such texts means they are likely to be presented in sentences rather than as bulleted lists.

• The estimated average probability of experiencing a major cardiac ad­verse event after treatment for in-stent restenosis with a follow-up period of 9±4 months was 30.0% (25.0-34.9%, 95% confidence interval) with strong evidence for heterogeneity between study specific results (P = 0.0001). (Radkea et al. 2003:266)

Example 14: Extract from a research paper on cardiac surgery

• The density of these clusters varied between 0.29-0.46 mm² (an aver­age of 0.34 mm²) on the basis of measurements of over 800 mm² of sample area in both microstructures. (Chandran 2005:304)

Example 15: Extract from an article on material testing

• In 1997, 46% of U.S. commercial aircraft were over 17 years of age and 28% were over 20 years. In 2001, 31% of the U.S. commercial fleet were over 15 years of age, and those aircraft accounted for 66% of the total cost of maintenance per block hour. (MacLean et al. 2005:1)

Example 16: Extract from a scientific report on aircraft safety

References

Often in a text, whether technical or scientific, an author will refer the reader to information which is contained elsewhere in the document or in other docu­ments. This can take the form of references to laws, directives and standards in the case of technical texts or to books and journal papers in a scientific text. In some cases, particularly in software-related documents, references may also be made to diagrams, interface items, menus or accompanying documents. This is often done so as not to impede the flow of information or to overload the reader with too much information at once. The decision to split a document into multiple smaller documents can be a way of keeping the size of individual documents to a minimum, and sometimes it is simply due to the medium chosen to disseminate the document, for example, online help, websites, leaflets or brochures.

• This product has been tested with regard to:

EMC Emissions: EN 50081-1 1992

RFI: EN 55022 1998

EMC Immunity: EN 50082-1 1997

Telephony: TBR211998

Safety: EN 60950+ Aml(93), Am2(93)

• The device complies with the provisions of European Directive 1999/5/EC

Example 17: References to standards and laws

Scientific texts use more traditional academic referencing methods in order to draw the reader's attention to additional information. This also serves to rein­force the arguments being made and to convince the reader of the validity of the information and the trustworthiness of the author. It could be argued that it is similar to the referencing of laws and standards which takes place in tech­nical documents where, in addition to identifying additional information, the references may show that, by conforming to a particular standard, a product is reliable and safe. Footnotes are also used in scientific texts either as a way of providing readers with additional, incidental information or as a way to provide references to other works.