Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) is an international standard for using English in technical documentation. It’s designed for English speakers of all levels and uses simplified grammar and terminology. This improves understandability and prevents mistakes. Standards like this are especially important in technical documentation and in the translation of manuals.
If you need ASD-STE100 for your content, you can simply create a style guide for it. Learn more about style guides in Style Guides - Quick Start.
To create the ASD-STE100 style guide, follow these steps:
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Go to Style > Style guides and click the name of the style guide you'd like to edit.
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Click Create style guide to open the dialog box.
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Choose a unique name for your style guide and select the language ASD-STE100. You might also add a description.
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Select your goal from the list that appears below the description box. You'll see this after you select your style guide language. Your style guide needs a least one goal. For ASD-STE100, there are three goals available.
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Click Create style guide.
The dialog box will close and you can immediately start to edit your style guide. Don't forget to assign it to the relevant writers.
ASD-STE100 has a limited number of goals. Because it’s an international standard, you shouldn’t delete or change guidelines from the set. Also, ASD-STE100 doesn't have Tone or Inclusive Language guidelines. You can still Fine-tune your Goals though.
For most goals, Acrolinx provides presets that are suitable for a lot of content needs. The presets make it easy to pick the type of guidance you’d like so you don’t have to adjust each guideline. You can choose the preset that fits best for each goal.
To select a preset, you generally follow these steps:
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Go to Style > Style guides and click the name of the style guide you'd like to edit.
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Click on a goal to expand it.
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Select a preset from the dropdown directly below the goal name.
In the goal Spelling and Grammar for ASD-STE100, you’ll find only one preset: US English. This is because US English is part of the ASD-STE100 specifications.
We support versions 6, 7, and 8 of the ASD-STE100 specification. For details, see the following section Supported Rules Within the ASD-STE100 Specification.
The ASD-STE100 goal has six presets:
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Issue 6 Writing Rules - use version 6 ASD-STE100 rules without the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
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Issue 6 Writing Rules + Dictionary - use version 6 ASD-STE100 rules and the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
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Issue 7 Writing Rules - use version 7 ASD-STE100 rules without the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
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Issue 7 Writing Rules + Dictionary - use version 7 ASD-STE100 rules and the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
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Issue 8 Writing Rules - use version 8 ASD-STE100 rules without the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
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Issue 8 Writing Rules + Dictionary - use version 8 ASD-STE100 rules and the ASD-STE100 dictionary for Acrolinx checks.
The Terminology goal is where you set your terminology for a style guide. To pick the terminology you want to use, you can select a term filter or one or more domains. This goal also lets you determine how Acrolinx should handle admitted terms if you’ve any. Learn more in Terminology (formerly Words and Phrases).
Acrolinx adheres to the strict ASD-STE100 dictionary. When you select a preset with a dictionary, we recommend adding your company-specific names and verbs to your terminology database and adding this terminology to your ASD-STE100 style guide. That way, your writers can use both your company terminology and the ASD-STE100 dictionary.
Terminology has no presets.
We support most rules in the ASD-STE100 specification. Use the following tables to see which rules we support. Keep in mind that the number of rules changed with version 7. That's why each version has a separate table.
Version 6
|
Section |
Section Supported Rules |
Unsupported Rules **** |
|---|---|---|
|
Section 1: Words |
1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.10*, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 1.15, 1.16, 1.17 |
1.8, 1.9, 1.12, 1.15, 1.17 |
|
Section 2: Noun phrases |
2.1, 2.3 |
2.2 |
|
Section 3: Verbs |
3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 |
3.8 |
|
Section 4: Sentences |
4.2**, 4.3 |
4.1, 4.4 |
|
Section 5: Procedures |
5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 |
|
|
Section 6: Descriptive writing |
6.1, 6.7 |
6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.8 |
|
Section 7: Warnings, cautions, notes |
7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6 |
|
|
Section 8: Punctuation and word counts |
8.1***, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.9, 8.10, 8.11 |
8.8 |
|
Section 9: Writing practices |
9.1, 9.2, 9.3 |
|
|
Section 9: Writing practices |
9.1, 9.2, 9.3 |
|
|
Acrolinx only partially supports rules that are marked with an asterisk. * Acrolinx supports this rule as part of the "use-approved words" rule, but we don’t actively classify words as slang or jargon. ** You can add words to many places in a sentence to enhance meaning. We only partially support this rule because it’s currently not possible to reliably identify all these instances in Acrolinx. *** Acrolinx supports the use of vertical lists via rule 4.3, but we don’t specifically enforce the use of ":" and "-" as specified by rule 8.1. |
**** It’s currently not possible to implement and check these rules in Acrolinx. |
Version 7 (Number of Rules Dropped from 65 to 53)
|
Section |
Supported Rules |
Unsupported Rules**** |
|---|---|---|
|
Section 1: Words |
1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.11*, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14 |
1.3, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 |
|
Section 2: Noun clusters |
2.1, 2.2, 2.3 |
|
|
Section 3: Verbs |
3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 |
3.7 |
|
Section 4: Sentences |
4.2**, 4.3 |
4.1, 4.4 |
|
Section 5: Procedural writing |
5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 |
5.5 |
|
Section 6: Descriptive writing |
6.3, 6.6 |
6.1, 6.2, 6.4, 6.5 |
|
Section 7: Safety instructions |
7.1, 7.2, 7.3 |
|
|
Section 8: Punctuation and word counts |
8.1, 8.2, 8.4***, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7 |
8.3 |
|
Section 9: Writing practices |
9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 |
|
|
Acrolinx only partially supports rules that are marked with an asterisk. * Acrolinx supports this rule as part of the "use-approved words" rule, but we don’t actively classify words as slang or jargon. ** You can add words to many places in a sentence to enhance meaning. We only partially support this rule because it’s currently not possible to reliably identify all these instances in Acrolinx. *** Acrolinx supports the use of vertical lists, but we don’t specifically enforce the use of ":" and "-" as specified by rule 8.4. |
**** It’s currently not possible to implement and check these rules in Acrolinx. |
Version 8
|
Section |
Supported Rules |
Unsupported Rules**** |
|---|---|---|
|
Section 1: Words |
1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.11*, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14 |
1.3, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 |
|
Section 2: Noun clusters |
2.1, 2.2, 2.3 |
|
|
Section 3: Verbs |
3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 |
3.7 |
|
Section 4: Sentences |
4.2**, 4.3 |
4.1, 4.4 |
|
Section 5: Procedural writing |
5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 |
5.5 |
|
Section 6: Descriptive writing |
6.3, 6.6 |
6.1, 6.2, 6.4, 6.5 |
|
Section 7: Safety instructions |
7.1, 7.2, 7.3 |
|
|
Section 8: Punctuation and word counts |
8.1, 8.2, 8.4***, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7 |
8.3 |
|
Section 9: Writing practices |
9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 |
|
|
Acrolinx only partially supports rules that are marked with an asterisk. * Acrolinx supports this rule as part of the "use-approved words" rule, but we don’t actively classify words as slang or jargon. ** You can add words to many places in a sentence to enhance meaning. We only partially support this rule because it’s currently not possible to reliably identify all these instances in Acrolinx. *** Acrolinx supports the use of vertical lists, but we don’t specifically enforce the use of ":" and "-" as specified by rule 8.4. |
**** It’s currently not possible to implement and check these rules in Acrolinx. |
Our documentation tells you how our standard The Acrolinx Score Explained. You might wonder if we calculate the Acrolinx Score differently for ASD-STE100.
The Acrolinx Score for ASD-STE100 is calculated exactly the same way but with one difference: Acrolinx uses the ASD-STE100 rules for counting words instead of the standard Acrolinx method. This means Acrolinx will generally count fewer words than it does with the standard word counting methods, for example counting placard titles or quotes as one word.
Generally, Acrolinx supports ASD-STE100 with every Acrolinx Integration. However, not all integrations are optimized for ASD-STE100 checking. Some rules only work when you check XML documents, such as rule 6.7 "paragraph length" and rule 8.10 "titles, placards, and quoted text count as one word". Checking ASD-STE100 with Acrolinx works best in a supported XML editor.
You can see the supported authoring tools in the Integrations Compatibility.
English-language S1000D documents sometimes require ASD-STE100. S1000D also has many other standards like a certain XML document structure. Acrolinx can provide context-specific style guidelines for this structure. These guidelines will help your writers ensure that their content matches the structure requirements. Apart from that, we've implemented S1000D units and measurements. You can also get extraction settings in a Content Profile for S1000D. These extraction settings will ensure that Acrolinx interprets this structure correctly during a check.