How has technical communication changed over the past twenty-five years in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe? As a task, it has not changed at all; as a professional occupation, it has evolved slowly; as a procedure, it has changed dramatically.

There are differences of vocabulary, grammar, and usage in American English and British English. As international interchange of information increases, we must alert writers and editors to these differences, and encourage them to find forms of expression common to both versions of English. If they do not, their texts may create difficulties, not only for readers using English as a foreign language, but also for native speakers of American English or British English.

Controlled English is a simplified form of English that uses a restricted vocabulary and a limited number of verb forms. Each word has one meaning, and synonyms are avoided. Sentences are kept as short, positive, and direct as possible. Non-English-speaking readers can be rapidly taught to understand controlled-English texts. They are not required to speak or write controlled English. An international company can produce just one controlled-English version of its technical documents for distribution worldwide, thus avoiding the need to translate into the languages of all its customers.

Professional technical communicators need to be “engineers plus.” In the United Kingdom, the plus is added in short courses after full engineering education. Developing the plus requires more than just training in grammar, graphics, and layout; it calls for programs which will develop the personal attributes communicators need in order to cope with the constraints with which they have to work.

In short courses on effective communication presented for industry in Great Britain and Europe by UWIST, Cardiff, the emphasis is on practical work, with extensive group discussion of each participant's attempts at various communication tasks.

The use of subjective testing as the only method for testing writing ability is questioned in this paper. Even a collaboration between engineers and specialists in English gives highly debatable results. The author of this paper, a well known British educator, has been experimenting with a type of objective testing. He invites readers to take one of his tests and to discuss the results with him.