It was originally developed during the 1980's by the European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA), at the request of the European Airline industry, who wanted a standardized form of English for aircraft maintenance documentation that could be easily understood by non-native English speakers.
It has since been adopted in many other fields outside the aerospace, defense, and maintenance domains for its clear, consistent, and comprehensive nature.
The current edition of the STE Standard, published in January 2025, consists of 53 writing rules and a dictionary of approximately 900 approved words.
The AIA (Aerospace Industries Association of America) was also invited to participate in this project.
[5] [6] Due to the ever-evolving nature of technology and technical language, the STEMG also relies on user feedback for suggested changes and updates.
Simplified Technical English can: The ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English Standard consists of two parts: The writing rules cover aspects of grammar and style.The rules also differentiate between two types of texts: procedures and descriptions.
For approved words, this column is empty unless there is a help symbol (lightbulb) related to other meanings or restrictions.
For example, nouns, multi-word nouns, or verbs such as grease, discoloration, propeller, aural warning system, overhead panel, to ream, and to drill are not listed in the dictionary, but they qualify as approved terms according to Part 1, Section 1 (specifically, writing rules 1.5 and 1.12).
"Simplified Technical English" is sometimes used as a generic term for a controlled natural language.
Although it was not initially intended for use as a general writing standard, it has been successfully adopted by other industries and for a wide range of document types.
The European Defence Standards Reference (EDSTAR) recommends STE as one of the best practice standards for writing technical documentation to be applied for defense contracting by all EDA (European Defence Agency) participating member states.
Today, the success of STE is such that other industries use it beyond its initial purpose for maintenance documentation and outside the aerospace and defense domains.
[11] HyperSTE is a plugin tool offered by Etteplan to check content for adherence to the rules and grammar of the standard.
Congree offers a Simplified Technical English Checker based on linguistic algorithms.