Technical Writing

YVONNE RAMOS, Ph.D.

August 29,2015
Yakan 1, Garden Orchid
The fundamental purpose of scientific discourse is
not the mere presentation of information and
thought but rather its actual communication. It
does not matter how pleased an author might be to
have converted all the right data into sentences
and paragraphs; it matters only whether a large
majority of the reading audience accurately
perceives what the author had in mind.
--George Gopen and Judith Swan
The Science of Scientific Writing
What is Technical Writing?

Technical writing introduces you to some of

the most important aspects of writing in the
world of science, technology, and business
the kind of writing that scientists, nurses,
doctors, computer specialists, government
officials, engineers, and other people
do as a part of their regular work.
What is Technical Writing?

The term technical refers to knowledge

that is not widespread, that is more the
territory of experts and specialists.

Whatever your major is, you are

developing an expertise, and whenever
you try to write anything about your field,
you are engaged in technical writing.
What is Technical Writing?

Technical communication can be written, oral,

or visual.
Technical writing is composed in and for the
workplace.
Technical writing is a significant factor in work
experience for a variety of reasons.
Technical writing serves valuable purposes in
the workplace and often involves teamwork.
Good Tech Writers Practice

Planning
Clarity
Brevity
Simplicity
Word Choice
Active Voice
Committing to Writing as a Process
Planning: Before You Begin

Identify your audience and their expectations

Know your purpose
Know your material
Understand the writing task at hand
Organize your thoughts and materials
Budget adequate time to write, review, revise and
edit
What is the purpose of technical
writing?

Technical writing is the delivery of

technical information to readers in a
manner that is adapted to their needs,
level of understanding, and background.

Technical writing is intended to

communicate to a specific audience, for a
specific purpose.
 The Audience

The audience element is so important that it is

one of the cornerstones of technical writing.

You are challenged to write about highly

technical subjects but in a way that a
beginnera non-specialistcould understand.
Translating Technical Information

In a world of rapid technological

development, people are constantly falling
behind and becoming technological
illiterates.
As a technical writer, you need to write
about the area of specialization you know
and plan to write about in such a way that
even Granddad can understand.
Goals of Effective Technical Writing

Clarity
Conciseness
Accuracy
Organization
Ethics
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

Methods for developing ideas precisely

An expressive essay can clarify the writers intent
through emotional, impressionistic, connotative
words (soon, many, several, etc.).
An impressionistic word such as
near will mean different things
to different people which is okay in
in an essay where the goal may be
to convey a feeling.
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

The ultimate goal of effective technical writing is to say

the same thing to every reader.
Lets say I write instructional manuals for company
manufacturing space heaters. If I write,

Place the space heater near an open window,

what will this mean to thousands of customers who

purchase the machine?
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

One person may place the heater 6 feet from

the window.
Another reader will place the heater 6 inches
from the window.
As the writer, I have failed to
communicate clearly.
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

Specify
Provide specific detail

Avoid vague words (some,

recently)

Answer reporters questions

(who, what, where, when, why,
how)
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

Avoid obscure words

Use easily understood words
Write to express, not to impress
Write to communicate, not to confuse
Write the way you speak

aforementioned already discussed

in lieu of instead of
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

Limit and/or define your use of

abbreviations , acronyms, and jargon.

Define your terms parenthetically

CIA (Cash in Advance)
or
Supply a separate glossary
Alphabetized list of terms, followed by their
definitions
Effective Technical Writing: Clarity

Use the active versus the passive voice.

Passive voice:
It was decided all employees will take a ten percent cut in
pay.
Unclear: Who decided?
Active: The Board of Directors decided that all
employees . . .
Overtime is favored by hourly workers.
Wordy
Active: Hourly workers favor overtime.
Effective Technical Writing:
Conciseness

Limit paragraph, word, and sentence length.

A paragraph in a memo, letter, or short report should consist of
No more than four to six typed lines or
No more than fifty words.
Fog index (sixth to eighth grade level)
Strive for an average of 15 words per sentence
No more than 5 multisyllabic words per 100 words
Effective Technical Writing:
Conciseness

Fog Index
Count up to 100 words in successive sentences
Divide words by number of sentences = average
number of words per sentence
Count number of long words (three or more syllables)
within sentences
Dont count proper names (Christopher Columbus),
long words created by combining shorter words
(chairperson), or three syllable words created by ed
or es endings (united).
Effective Technical Writing:
Conciseness

Use the meat cleaver theory of revision

Cut the sentence in half or thirds
Avoid shun words
Avoid words ending in tion or sion
Came to the conclusion concluded
Avoid camouflaged words
Make an amendment to amend
Effective Technical Writing:
Conciseness

Avoid the expletive pattern

There is, are, was, were, will be
It is, was
There are three people who will work for Acme.
Three people will work for Acme.
Omit redundancies
During the year of 1996
During 1996
Effective Technical Writing:
Conciseness

Avoid wordy phrases

In order to purchase to purchase

Proofread for accuracy

Consider ethics
Effective Technical Writing:
Accuracy

The importance of correct

grammar and mechanics
Grammatical or mechanical
errors make writers look
unprofessional and
incompetent.
Effective Technical Writing:
Accuracy

Grammar is so important in technical

writing that in a one page assignment
4 major grammatical errors = F
3 major grammatical errors = D
2 major grammatical errors = C
1 major grammatical error = B
A means excellent which is defined as
without flaw
Effective Technical Writing:
Organization

Methods for organizing

Spatial
General to Specific
Chronological
Mechanism Description
Process Description
Classification
Effective Technical Writing:
Organization

Methods for organizing

Definition
Comparison/Contrast
More Important to Less Important
Situation-Problem-Solution-
Evaluation
Cause-Effect
Effective Technical Writing: Ethics

Ethics methods encouraging moral

standards in technical writing
Practical
Legal
Moral
Effective Technical Writing: Ethics

General categories of ethics in communication

Behavior towards colleagues, subordinates and

others (plagiarism, harassment, malicious actions)

Dealing with experimental subjects, interviewees,

etc. (informed consent)

Telling the truth (falsify data, misrepresent facts)

Rhetoricchoosing your words (loaded words, discriminatory

language, logical fallacies)
Effective Technical Writing:
Process

The writing process is effective . . . and

easy.
All that you need to do is three things:
Prewrite (about 25 percent of your time)
Write (about 25 percent of your time)
Rewrite (about 50 percent of your time)
Six Principles of Clear Writing

1. Prefer clear, familiar words

2. Keep most sentences short and simple.
3. Prefer active voice verbs; avoid
passives
4. Get people into your writing.
5. Use a Conversational style.
6. Gather all your information before you
start writing.
Ten Principles of Editing

1. Prefer the active voice.

2. Dont make nouns out of good, strong working
verbs.
3. Be concise. Cut all excess baggage. Keep your
average sentence length under twenty words.
4. Be specific. Use concrete terms instead of
generalizations.
5. Keep related sentence elements together; delete the
unrelated.
6. Avoid unnecessary shifts of subject, number, tense,
voice, or point of view.
7. Prefer the simple word to be far fetched and the right
word to be almost right.
8. Dont repeat a word or words unnecessarily. But
dont hesitate to repeat when the repetition will
increase clarity.
9. Make sentence element that are parallel in thought,
parallel in form. But do not use parallelism to
express thoughts that are not parallel.
10. Arrange your materials logically. Always begin with
ideas the reader can readily understand. If you must
present difficult materials go one step at a time. Do
not skip any steps. Arrange your format to give the
reader every possible handle as the materials.
Technical Writing

Is important to success in business

Lets you conduct business
Takes time
Costs the company
Reflects your interpersonal communication
skills
Often involves teamwork
In summary

1. RESONANT CHARACTERS
Wrong: Professional
advancement is achieved
through hard work.
Correct: Managers achieved
success through hard work.
2. ACTION VERBS

Wrong: The memo is written well.

Correct: The manager crafted the
memo with resonant characters
and strong verbs.
3. The 8-word Test

Wrong: The manager responsible for

the daily assignments and worker
allocation charts in our department is
sick today.
Correct: Our department manager
called in sick today, so we are
missing the daily assignments on the
worker allocation charts.
4. Explicit Connectors

Wrong: The manager didnt treat the

workers well. Workers were poorly
motivated and often quit.
Correct: The manager mistreated the
workers. Because of that, the
workers suffered from poor
motivation and often quit.
5. From Old to New

Wrong: We will mix the new formula

with the following steps. This will
modify our old procedures.
Correct: Our existing protocol calls for
mixing the formula with established
procedures. The new method will
improve upon that in the following
ways.
6. P/S/A Paradigm
Bad Writing
Developmental success for everyone
within an organization from top to
bottom and all steps in between is
ensured when good work is encouraged
among the front-line people. Those
responsible for leadership will get more
loyalty and harder work from their team
members if they treat them well.
Better
Our companys success is important to us all.
Unfortunately, we have a costly turnover of
valuable workers. However, our managers
can remedy this by recognizing, respecting,
and rewarding the good efforts of our
workers. Such responsive managers may win
the loyalty and best efforts of our teams.
Therefore we should hire a consultant for
managerial training.
Sources

Society for Technical Communication

Technical Writing - A Dalton: Organizing

Online Technical Writing: Information

Infrastructures Comparison

Online Technical Writing