Terminology, Register, and Style
Terms, tone, and audience
Terminology work begins before drafting: identify the subject field, the text type, and the audience. A term may have several valid equivalents, but one concept should normally receive one target term throughout a document. Register is the matching of formality, technical density, emotional tone, and genre conventions. Legal texts favor fixed formulas and 'shall' in English; medical texts distinguish specialist terms from lay synonyms; marketing texts tolerate shorter sentences, idioms, and second-person address. Style covers cohesion, sentence rhythm, voice, and punctuation choices that support readability. Accuracy without register control can produce a text that is factually right and socially wrong.
Traps
The classic trap is the dictionary's first gloss used in every context. Another is register drift: a casual source rendered in stiff legalese, or a formal source rendered with contractions and slang. Watch inconsistent acronym expansion, mixed synonyms for the same entity, and calques that are understandable but unnatural. Idioms and collocations rarely survive literal translation. Client glossaries and style guides override personal preference; where none exists, document your choice and apply it consistently.
Worked example
Source (software marketing): 'Our tool leverages robust algorithms to optimize throughput.' A technical register might use 'uses' and 'improve processing speed,' while a promotional register may keep 'leverages' and 'robust.' Neither is wrong in isolation; the error is mixing them. Rule of thumb: sample the source for contractions, honorifics, passive voice, and term density, then match those features in the target and keep a termbase entry for every recurring concept.