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(U) Write Right: A Note on Validity Wording
FROM:
of the Reporting Board (S12R)
Run Date: 06/20/2005
(U//FOUO) A longtime reporter asked a more detailed question
relating to the column on "possible" and "probable": "In years past,
SIGINT reporters would use [these words] to convey confidence
levels on the order of 20% or 80%, respectively. Beyond correct
grammar usage, does contemporary reporting still use those
expressions to suggest confidence factors?"
(U//FOUO) Our correspondent is right about past attempts to
quantify those terms. A Reporting Board member recalled that a
scale was specified in an old version of USSID 300, and produced a
1985 version of the SIGINT Reporters' Style Manual with a table
showing A through D Validity, a numerical equivalent of certainty,
and a list of words suggested for each level (B-val: "probably,"
"apparent"; D-val: "suggests," "tenuous," etc.). Apparently (oops,
our information was A val, so no validity wording required) this
codification resulted from a desire to conform with the same scale
used by linguists in transcriptions and translations -- a case of
comparing apples and oranges. Determining what someone said
and what they meant, or how other factors affected the situation,
are very different skills.
(U) Official attempts to insure uniformity are often motivated by a
desire to make intelligence assessments completely objective and
certain. The usual result, however, is something like the scene in
the movie "Dead Poets Society" where the teacher reads from a
textbook that outlines the two-axis scale of qualifications necessary
for a poem to be considered "great." Such systems distract from
the ability to judge a report.
(U) The Reporting Board recommends that reporters use validity
terms in a way that they themselves are comfortable with and can
defend if questions arise about their reports; it's particularly
important to be consistent within a report (e.g., don't toss in a
"possibly" for the sake of variety when you've been referring to
something as "likely"). Yes, there have been recent rumors of
high-level discussions that raise the question of how to quantify
everything possible in an intelligence report, but we believe that
"not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything
that can be counted counts."
SERIES:
(U) Write Right '05
1. Write Right : Too
Much Redundancy is
Redundant
2. Write Right -SIGINT Myths: The
Traffic Fairy
3. Write Right : There
Is No Index of
Forbidden Words
4. Write Right :
Avoiding SIGINTisms
5. Write Right : A Note
on Validity Wording
6. Write Right : Brevity
Can Impede Clarity
(or, A Capital
Situation)
7. Write Right :
Opening the Traffic
Fairy's Packages
8. Write Right :
Management Theory
Applied to Reporting
9. Write Right : Give
the 'Key Points' Style
a Try
10. Write Right : Still
More on the Traffic
Fairy
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108