ver the years C and C++ programmers have devised many ways of making their writing clearer. As a result program are much more readable than ever before. I’ve often wondered if the lessons learned by programming could be applied to English as well. Take Microsoft notation (aka. Hungarian notation) for example. It puts a prefix on each variable name telling us what the type of the variable. Wouldn’t English be much clearer if we identified each verb with “v”, each noun with “n” and so on.

pAfter avAll aMany nEnglish nWords vCan vHave aMore cThan nOne nMeaning. pFor nExample “mall” vIs prBoth aA nVerb cAnd aA nNoun. pWith pnOur aNew nNotation pYou vCan vWrite nSomething aLike: aThere vWas aSuch aA nCrowd pAt arThe nMall aThat pnWe vWere vMalled cAnd nPeople vCan aEasily vUnderstand pYou.

avNext pnWe vTurn pnOur nAttention pTo nSentence vGrouping. pIn nC pnWe vUse avCurly nBraces “{}” pTo vGroup nStatements. pIn nEnglish pnWe vUse arThe nParagraph. aA nStart pOf nParagraph vIs vIndicated pBy aA aBlank nLine cOr aA nIndent. aBut pnThis nConstruct vIs aRather vLimited cAnd vConfusing.

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