Technical Writing and Presentation skills

ASSIGNMENT

Elements and Characteristics of Technical Writing

Technical Writing and Presentation skills

Group 4
420, 417, 405, 432 & 440

22/12/2017
Technical Writing and Presentation skills

Elements and Characteristics of Technical Writing

Content:
1. What is Technical Writing
2. Elements of Technical Writing
3. Qualities of Technical Writing
4. Characteristics of Technical Writing
5. Conclusion
What is Technical Writing?
Technical writing is communication written for and about business and industry, focusing on
products and services: how to manufacture them, market them, manage them, deliver them, and
use them.
Elements of Technical Writing:
The ability to communicate clearly is the most important skill engineers and scientists can have.
Their best work will be lost if it is not communicated effectively. In this chapter, elements of the
technical style of writing are examined. Technical writing differs in presentation and tone from
other styles of writing; these differences are described first. The most important elements of the
technical writing style to be discussed are conciseness and unambiguity. The chapter ends with a
discussion of proofreading and some helpful hints in developing technical writing skills.
Development:
Start with overall objectives, then get into details then Logical progression (Layout, Structure,
format) Always keep track of your sources (Data should be resourceful) Presentation of data is
crucial.
Grammar:
Meanings are encoded into Wordings. Structure of Words, Clauses and Phrases.
There is a famous quote, “Once the grammar has been learned writing is a simply talking on
paper and in time learning what to say.”
 Using Grammar Effectively:
Don’t run your sentences together. Make the antecedents of your pronouns clear.
 Use of Correct Punctuation:
Use Apostrophes Correctly. Know Where to Place Quotation Marks. Use a Hyphen for
Compound Adjectives. Distinguish Between a Colon and Semi-colon.
Organization:
There are different patterns that are commonly used to organize documents: Formal
classification, informal classification, comparison, partitioning, segmenting, cause/effect, and
problem/solution. Which organizational pattern is used will depend on the type of document that
is being composed; however, the goal of effective organizing is to make the document easier to
use, and several organizational patterns are often used in a single document.
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 FORMAL CLASSIFICATION
Formal classification is simply grouping facts together based on their common attributes.
Each group is often divided into subgroups enabling the facts to be precisely classified.
Formal classification requires that each fact can only be present in one grouping, and
each grouping must follow the same principle. For example, to classify three animals,
each animal should only fit into one group. A tiger, wolf, and zebra could be grouped into
categories such as feline, canine, and equine. Each grouping follows the same principle of
grouping the animals according to their biological family. A faulty classification would
be feline, canine, and mammal because feline and canine are biological families and
mammal refers to a biological class. Still further, each species can be broken up into
subgroups and divisions like in cattle, Herefords and Jerseys are both cattle, but one is a
beef animal and the other is a dairy animal.

 INFORMAL CLASSIFICATION:
Informal classification can help you create a reader-centered communication when you
need to organize information about a large number of items but find it impossible or
undesirable to classify them according to the kind of objective characteristic that is
necessary for formal classification. Informal classification differs from formal
classification because the groupings need not follow a consistent principle of
classification; however, like formal classification, each fact should still only fit into one
grouping. For example, a tiger, wolf, and zebra could be classified into canines and
African mammals. The groupings do not follow a consistent principle, but each animal
can only be grouped into one category. Informal classification is a valid organizational
pattern and can be very useful to readers when properly used.

 PARTITIONING:
Partitioning refers to describing an object. If a document must be written about a bicycle,
a writer may divide the description into the smaller parts of the bicycle. A writer may
first describe the braking system, then the gear system, then the frame, seat, and tires. By
dividing the document into smaller parts, information becomes easier to locate and the
document becomes more useful to the reader.

 CLASSIFYING:
As with describing, narrating, defining, and comparing, classifying is a component of all
writing genres. Just as writers pause to describe ideas and events or define new concepts
in most documents, they routinely classify information–that is, show or tell readers how
information can be grouped into categories.
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 Presentation and Tone

Technical communication differs from fiction in many ways. In mystery novels the
reader is kept in suspense because the writer has hidden important clues that are
explained at the end of the story to produce a surprise. In contrast, the readers of technical
writing are given the important conclusions at the beginning, followed by evidence
supporting those conclusions. The following example illustrates the difference. The
simple question Do we have any mailtoday? can be answered by a man sitting on his
porchin two ways. He could say: “I got up out of my chair and sauntered out to the
mailbox. I looked up before opening the box and saw the mailman going down the street
past our house. When I opened the mailbox there was nothing in it, so I don’t think we’ll
have any mail today.” Or he could answer: “No, we won’t have mail today. The mailbox
is empty and the mailman has passed our house.” Note that in the first reply, the reader
must wait until the end of the story to find the answer. This is typical of fiction writing. In
the second reply the answer is given up front and then justified. The tone of the second
reply is kept factual. This is what technical writing should do.

 Number, Voice, and Tense

Most technical communication is done in the third person. Pronouns like you, I, and we
are to be avoided. Only Nobel laureates may write in the first person without seeming to
be pompous.Readers probably studied voice in an English class. As a reminder, examples
of the different types of voice are:

Active voice:The ice melted at 0◦C.

Passive voice: The ice was melted by convection heating.
Imperative voice: Place the ice in a convection ovenuntil the ice melts.

The imperative voice is seldom used in technical communication except when

giving instructions about how to do something. It tends to sound like the
author is ordering the reader to do something. There is a strong temptation to
overuse the passive voice in technical writing to avoid using I and we;
however, it is good to use the active voice wherever possible.

Past and perfect tenses are used in technical writing, because they are used to
report something that has happened. The difference in tenses is illustrated by
the following:

Past tense: A break in the circuit interrupted thecurrent.

Perfect tense: A break in the circuit has interruptedthe current.

Technical Writing and Presentation skills

DOCUMENT DESIGN
Document design is concerned with using color, typography, text, placement, etc. in the creation
of a document, either electronic or print, that helps people use the document. Recently, there has
been a surge in the value placed on visual communication, the heart of document design. Though
this did not used to be an emphasis of technical writing, visual communication is becoming more
and more important for the technical writer. Document design has also become more important
due to the boom of the web. The web is now housing more and more technical documentation,
which is inherently more visual than print documentation.
Style
Technical style means putting words in the correct position within a sentence so that they reach
their maximum effectiveness. When we read, we expect to find the subject at the beginning of
the sentence. We expect the verb to come right after the subject. You’ll find writing much easier
if you think of sentences as following this formula:
Subject + verb = sentence
“Subject + verb = sentence” is the writing equivalent of “2 + 2 = 4.” It works every
time, without fail. In this formula, the subject is in the “subject position” and the verb is in the
“verb position.”

Qualities of Technical Writing

Qualities of technical writing are as follow:
 Planning
 Brevity
 Simplicity
 Word choice
 Committing to writing as a process

 Planning:
It should be before beginning of technical writing. We have to identify our audience and
what are they expecting from us. We have to know our purpose and what are we going to
deliver and understand the writing task at hand and to budget adequate time to write,
review, revise and edit.
Technical Writing and Presentation skills

 Brevity:
It shows how much our data is efficient and how can we make our data more efficient
like we have to avoid redundancy and provide less & useful data. In order to attract the
audience attention, we usually use the important and interesting stuff first in our
document.

 Simplicity:
Simplicity means to use the details of your data wisely. Specific details should be
desirable but be careful to balance detail with audience needs for clarity. But its all
depend on the desire of audience that what kind of stuff they want.

 Word Choice:
In order to make our data more attractive to audience, we use simple words to make the
things more clear to audience like:
Avoid too many “to be” words like “is” , “was” etc.
Avoid excess words which slow comprehension of the main part.
 Committing to writing as a process:
Good writing doesn't happen overnight; it requires planning ,drafting, rereading, revising
and editing. Learning and improvement requires self-review, peer-review, subject-matter
expert feedback and practice.

Characteristics of Effective Technical Writing

Technical writing is meant to get a job done. Everything else is secondary. If the writing style is
interesting, so much the better. There are 6 basic characteristics of technical writing:

Clarity:
The written document must convey a single meaning that the reader can easily
understand. Unclear technical writing leads to wasted time, money and resources.
which refers to ease of understanding, is a special problem in science and technology
writing. Increase the clarity of your material in three ways:
problem statements, and even strategic repetition also promote structural clarity. Graphs
and tables, effectively worded headings guide readers and help keep the large picture in
focus.
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Stylistic clarity is promoted by simple, direct language. Word choice is a factor in

stylistic clarity: use simple language wherever possible to counteract the abstract, highly
specialized terms of science and technology.
Contextual clarity, in which the importance, authorization, and implications of your work
are made available, also contributes to ease of understanding. All work has a context, and
your readers want to understand what the context of your document is. What prompts you
to write? What is your purpose? Whose work precedes or has influenced yours? What is
the organizational and intellectual context of your problem? Answer those questions in
introductions and problem statements and in your citations and other references.

Comprehensiveness:
A comprehensive technical document provides all the information its readers will need.
Readers who must act on a document need to be able to apply the information efficiently
and effectively.
Conciseness:
To be useful, technical writing must be concise. The longer a document is, the more
difficult it is to use, for the obvious reason that it takes more of the reader’s time. A
document must strive to balance the claims of clarity, conciseness, and
comprehensiveness; it must be long enough to be clear-given the audience, purpose, and
subject –but not a word longer.
Principles of Conciseness:
There are four basic principles of achieving conciseness in document. These are described as:
1. Avoiding redundancy
2. Avoid pre-positional phrases
3. Avoid Passive Voice
4. Avoid Tautology

Correctness:
Good technical writing observes the conventions of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and
usage. Leaving sloppy grammar errors in your writing is like wearing a soup-stained
shirt to a business meeting: it will distract your readers, and may make them doubt the
importance of your information.
Coherentness:
Technical Writing and Presentation skills

Coherence describes the way anything, such as an argument (or part of an argument)
“hangs together.” If something has coherence, its parts are well-connected and all
heading in the same direction. Without coherence, a discussion may not make sense or
may be difficult for the audience to follow. It’s an extremely important quality of formal
writing.
Coherence is relevant to every level of organization, from the sentence level up to the complete
argument. However, we’ll be focused on the paragraph level in this article. That’s because:
1. Sentence-level coherence is a matter of grammar, and it would take too long to explain all
the features of coherent grammar.
2. Most people can already write a fairly coherent sentence, even if their grammar is not
perfect.
3. When you write coherent paragraphs, the argument as a whole will usually seem coherent
to your readers.

Other characteristics of Technical writing

Some other characteristics of technical writing are following:
 Specific Audience
 Specific Purpose
 Accuracy
 Accessibility
 Plagiarism
 Waffling
 End user documentation
Specific Audience:
The audience of a technical report or any piece of writing for that matter is the intended or
potential reader or readers. For most technical writers, this is the most important consideration in
planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You "adapt" your writing to meet the needs,
interests, and background of the readers who will be reading your writing.
Types of Audience:
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 Experts:
These are the people who know the theory and the product inside and out. They designed
it, they tested it, they know everything about it. Often, they have advanced degrees and
operate in academic settings or in research and development areas of the government and
business worlds. The nonspecialist reader is least likely to understand what these people
are saying-but also has the least reason to try. More often, the communication challenge
faced by the expert is communicating to the technician and the executive.
 Technicians:
These are the people who build, operate, maintain, and repair the stuff that the experts
design and theorize about. Theirs is a highly technical knowledge as well, but of a more
practical nature.
 Executives:
These are the people who make business, economic, administrative, legal, governmental,
political decisions on the stuff that the experts and technicians work with. If it's a new
product, they decide whether to produce and market it. If it's a new power technology,
they decide whether the city should implement it. Executives are likely to have as little
technical knowledge about the subject as nonspecialists.

Specific Purpose:
Every type of writing has a goal. There are some forms of writing that are geared to telling a
story and there are other forms of writing that are geared to expressing opinions. The main
purpose of technical writing is to provide sometimes complex information. This is the type of
writing that will:
 Assist a person with understanding more about a particular item, such as a computer or a
new drug or a new piece of technology.
 Explain how an object works or how to complete a project.
Technical writing is targeted to readers who are looking for information on a
particular topic. The goal in targeting this group is to make sure that the information provided is
clear, concise and easy for anyone to understand.

Accuracy:
Cultivate accuracy in your writing. Accuracy, which is the careful conforming to truth or fact,
has three main aspects:
Document accuracy refers to the proper coverage of your topics in appropriate detail.
Often an accurate document needs to focus clearly on a problem. Document accuracy is
generally cultivated by a clear problem statement and by a preliminary outline. These
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writing tools help you focus your writing effort by reducing your data in a way that
solves a theoretical or practical problem.

Stylistic accuracy concerns the careful use of language to express meaning. Accurate
language requires the careful use of paragraph and sentence structure and word choice to
describe and analyze your topics effectively. As a writer, you gain command of accuracy
by studying the elements of style and by learning to apply those elements to your
drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Stylistic accuracy is also a matter of of using
words precisely.

Technical accuracy requires stylistic accuracy but is not based solely on it. The effective
document in science and technology must be grounded in a technically accurate
understanding and representation of the subject. Technical accuracy depends on the
writer's conceptual mastery of the subject and its vocabulary, as well as on his or her
ability to analyze and shape data with a minimum of distortion. In science and
technology, enormous creative energy is given to mastering this technical aspect of
subject development.
Accessibility:
Writing a technical document is hard. Reading a poorly written technical document is harder,
and probably more painful than writing one. So one of the most important criteria of a user-
friendly tech document is accessibility. To make a document accessible the following things
should be used:
 Use headings
 Use lists
 Use tables
 Use images
 Use plain language
 Identify document language
Plagiarism:
The word “plagiarism” comes from the Latin plagiarus meaning “kidnapper”. To steal and
pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own or to use (another's production) without
crediting the source. In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing
someone else’s work and pretending it as your own.
Types of plagiarism:
 Whole-paper plagiarism:
All or most of the student's paper is lifted from another student or a published source.
 Cut-and-paste plagiarism:
Parts of a paper including phrases and sentences to entire paragraphs are taken from
the internet or somewhere else.
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 Cut-and-paste plagiarism with references:

Words or ideas in a paper are included from another source, a reference to the source
is included, but there is no quotation signal.
Waffling:
To talk or write a lot without saying anything important and interesting.Disapproving talk or
writing that uses lot of words but does not give any useful information.
End user documentation:
Document that contains procedural information about the working of product. End user
documentation refers to the documentation that describes how a product or service operates. It is
used to help the user in using the product and to decrease your support cost and to improve your
company’s image.