This is the first
post in a series of posts about Technical Writing. These posts were required for a class I am
taking at University of Arkansas Grantham (uagrantham.edu) for their online EET
BS degree. The goal of these posts is to give an overview of what, why, who,
and how of Technical Writing.
Technical Writing is the process of writing any document or content for the purpose of conveying technical information rather than academic or fictional information. It includes content such as a resume or professional website, which conveys technical information about a single person to potential employers or clients. It includes technical marketing materials and instructions designed to convey information to consumers or users of a product, service, or idea. It also includes content related to a single project or problem that a client is having, such as problem statements, feasibility reports, proposals, and progress reports.
It is likely that you use technical content from someone else at least weekly. Every time you use instructions for cooking a meal, instructions for building something, look at a user manual to fix something, or watch videos to learn how to do something new, you are using a technical document or a technical video. Its not there to teach you something academic, or to entertain you (though it may do one of those things also), its there to give you technical details that help you accomplish something.
The importance of
good technical writing is shown by how frequently we use it, maybe you only use
it weekly, or maybe, like me, you use it almost daily. Or think of it another
way, how often do you buy something, or try to do something and the
instructions are just horrible. Either they don’t have words at all, or they
don’t make sense because the translator is not a native English speaker, or the
pictures don’t match the parts you have.
How much we ourselves rely on good technical writing shows how important
it is for us to write excellent technical documents for others when we write
them.
Technical writing
needs to be tailored to the intended audience, for example, instructions for
how to make a sandwich might be tailored to your 9 year old boy who is always
hungry, while instructions for how to use a control system would be designed
for operators who already (mostly) understand the process being controlled. If you designed instructions for a peanut
butter sandwich with a thirty year old audience in mind, they would likely be
much briefer that the same instructions designed for a 9 year old or for
someone younger.
Because Technical
information can be given through various media, (printed document, wiki, PDF, video,
web page, etc.) the method for communicating should be chosen based on the best
way to communicate the intended content, the best way to reach the intended
audience, and the method the author is proficient in using. Because these three criteria for choosing the
media are not all going to be answered the same, there will have to be some
compromises between what would be selected by each individual question.
For the technical
document or content to maximize its usability, it should be well organized. A long document may have a table of contents
to assist the user in finding the appropriate information that they need. It may also have an index to assist in finding
a particular topic, especially if it is a printed document. A video might be organized
with chapters so that viewers can skip to the appropriate section when they
only need to remember one part.
Writing a
technical document should be started by considering the different factors for
the document. Here is a recap of some of the factors to consider:
·
Purpose: What is the goal for the document?
·
Audience: Who will be reading or using this
document?
·
Content: What information should this document
provide to the audience?
·
Media: Will this be a typical document like a
Word document or PDF or will it be some other format such as a wiki, or a
video?
·
Organization: Any document must be organized to
assist the user in finding the important information.
After thinking
about these factors, then the author should progress through writing several
stages of the document:
·
Outline
·
Rough Draft
· Final Draft
No comments:
Post a Comment