RIZAL TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Cities of Mandaluyong and Pasig
SESSION NO. / WEEK 1
MODULE 1: UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION
1. Definition of Technical Communication
2. Technical Communication Reaches a Global Audience
3. Many Roles played by Technical Communication
4. Main Features of Technical Communication
Overview
This module presents the definition and nature of technical writing—giving
you easy access to information by formatting and using language as related to
technical writing. It describes the many roles played by Technical Communication
and main features of Technical Communication. It also sheds light on how Technical
Communication Reaches a Global Audience.
Technical Writing teaches the organization, development, and refinement of
technical communications, with an emphasis on business context and practical
application.
Study Guide
To carefully understand this module, you are instructed to read this module
thoroughly to be enlightened more of the discussion.
Furthermore, an activity is provided at the end of this module to assess your
learning.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the module, you will be able to:
1. Define and understand the nature of Technical Communication
2. Draft a sample of technical writing
3. Distinguish technical writing from creative writing
Topic Presentation
TECHNICAL WRITING
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What is Technical Communication?
Technical communication is a broad field and includes any form of
communication that exhibits one or more of the following characteristics:
Communicating about technical or specialized topics, such as
computer applications, medical procedures, or environmental regulations.
Communicating by using technology, such as web pages, help files, or
social media sites.
Providing instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical
the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.
The value that technical communicators deliver is twofold: They make
information more useable and accessible to those who need that information, and in
doing so, they advance the goals of the companies or organizations that employ
them. The following examples illustrate the value of the products technical
communicators produce or the services they provide.
Software instructions help users be more successful on their own, improving
how easily those products gain acceptance into the marketplace and reducing costs
to support them.
Medical instructions help patients and care-providers manage a patient’s
treatment, improving the health of the patient while reducing costs and risks
associated with incorrect care.
Functional specifications and proposals help one group of technical experts
communicate effectively with other technical experts, speeding up development
cycles, reducing rework caused by misunderstandings, and eliminating risks
associated with miscommunication.
Training programs provide people with new or improved skills, making them
more employable and their organizations and products more efficient and safe.
Well-designed websites make it easier for users to find information,
increasing user traffic to and satisfaction with those websites.
Technical illustrations clarify steps or identify the parts of a product, letting
users focus on getting their task done quickly or more accurately.
Usability studies uncover problems with how products present themselves to
users, helping those products become more user friendly.
The following is a partial list of the different jobs within technical communication:
Technical Writers & Editors
Indexers
Information Architects
Instructional Designers
Technical Illustrators
Globalization & Localization Specialists
TECHNICAL WRITING
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Usability & Human Factors Professionals
Visual Designers
Web Designers & Developers
Teachers & Researchers of Technical Communication
Trainers and E-Learning Developers
Technical communication deliverables include:
How-to guides
Illustrations
Instructions for use (IFU)
Instructor-led and eLearning training materials
Journal articles
Online help
Quick references and job aids
Technical, training, and reference manuals
User interface text
Web-based product support
Webpages/sites
Videos
What all technical communicators have in common is a user-centered
approach to providing the right information, in the right way, at the right time to make
someone’s life easier and more productive.
Watch: [Link]
Audiences of Technical Communication
Often, writers of creative literature focus so much on the subject of their
writing that they forget about their audience altogether. This is not the case for
technical communication. While the audience for creative writing can be a general
group around the same age, the audience for technical writing is a specific, targeted
audience. In technical communication, the audience is the most important focus of
the writing. After all, technical communicators are writing to help their audience
understand what is needed to perform a task. Therefore, the technical communicator
must know and understand their audience.
What if you purchased a new bookshelf, and when you took out the directions
to assemble the bookshelf, the document was written for the manufacturer instead of
the user? The directions might provide instructions for what length to cut each piece
or what color to paint the wood, but it wouldn't contain easy-to-understand
instructions on how to put the bookshelf together because the writing would be
directed at the wrong audience. Understanding who you're writing the document for
TECHNICAL WRITING
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will determine what you say, making the audience just as important as your subject in
technical communication.
Who are Technical Communicators?
Technical communicators perform a broad range of job functions, in a wide
variety of industries. Their primary concern is to communicate information to users of
products and services in a clear, easy to read and understandable manner. To
perform their jobs, technical communicators focus on the needs of their end audience
– the final readers of the documents – and use a variety of desktop publishing and
graphics tools.
Technical communicators are found in all industries: telecommunications,
agriculture, mining, military, aviation, transport, pharmaceuticals, medical, space etc.
Technical communicators can also specialize in various aspects of information
management, such as website design, graphic design, marketing communications,
knowledge management, online help, print production, training, proposal writing and
technical documentation.
What do Technical Communicators do?
The tasks of technical communicators are wide ranging, depending on the
industry and the company. They include writing user manuals and tutorials, producing
online help files, managing or providing web site content, writing product briefs and
product descriptions, white papers, presentations, case studies, proposals and other
corporate documents. Technical communicators are required to understand
technology and communicate it to end-users in a clear, coherent and concise
manner. They are also expected to learn a wide range of word processing and
graphic tools for accomplishing their tasks.
Features of Technical Communication
What really distinguishes technical communication from other forms of writing is the
style of the writing. Creative writing often uses long sentences and connotative words
to develop an emotional meaning through the language. It can sound beautiful, but it
may take the reader a while to figure out what is being said. Since the purpose of
technical communication is to help the target audience understand the subject
quickly and complete a task correctly, the style of writing must be simple and easy to
understand.
Technical Communication must be:
Attractive
The characteristic of attractiveness doesn't mean the document has to look
pretty. What it does mean is that the layout of the document must be attractive to the
reader. In one glance, the reader must be able to know what's important.
You can make a technical document 'attractive' by including headings that are
larger and bolder than the other text to bring attention to the main topic of each part
TECHNICAL WRITING
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of the document. Another way to make a technical document attractive to a reader is
to include visual aids and graphics that clearly show what the reader needs to do.
Accurate
Accuracy refers to the truthfulness and the variety of a given statement.
Proofreading avoid from spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes.
Clear
Clarity refers to the audience understanding what you want to communicate. Use
simple and clear language.
Concise
Learn the strategies of conciseness. Conciseness has a special value in technical
fields. Writers are often tempted to include everything that could be relevant to their
subject, rather than merely everything that is relevant to the communication task at
hand. The concise document is a piece of writing that conveys only the needed
material.
Conciseness requires careful revising. Become familiar with the strategies for
reducing wordiness. Look for ways of cutting useless words, sentences, and sections
from the document.
Coherent
Coherence is the quality of hanging together, of providing the reader an easily
followed path. Writers promote coherence by making their material logically and
stylistically consistent, and by organizing and expressing their ideas in specific
patterns. Efforts to emphasize the relationships among the elements of a document
strengthen its impact. Coherence can dramatically improve the reader's ability to
understand your material by promoting its flow or readability.
Appropriate
Make your document appropriate to your goals in writing it, your audience's
purpose in reading it, and the specific institutional contexts in which it is written and
read. All technical writing should also be appropriate to the specific institutional
context that motivated its creation. It should not only serve the writer's and the
reader's purposes but also conform to the goals and conventions of the institution in
which it exists.
Guided Exercises / Learning Activities
ACTIVITY NO. 1
Draft some technical writing related to your interest.
TECHNICAL WRITING
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RIZAL TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
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Write a paragraph or two on a topic about which you have specialized
knowledge, and can use specialized terminology to explain the idea or instruct the
reader. For example, you might write about how to execute a yoga position such as a
“downward facing dog.”
Below is the criteria for scoring your output:
Techno-jargons – 10 points
Content - 20 points
___________
30 points
Assessment
Write a poem, an expressive essay or an expository essay about an object
we usually see at home. Take the same subject and write a technical memo,
complaint letter, recommendation report, instructions for using the object, or a
manufacturing specification. Compare and contrast the results.
Below is the criteria for scoring your output:
Creativity – 15 points
Content - 35 points
___________
50 points
Save your work in a word file or PDF format then upload it on the posted
classwork in the google classroom.
References
(n.d) Retrieved from The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing:
[Link]
(n.d) Retrieved from Society of Technical Communication: [Link]
stc/defining-technical-communication/
Characteristics of Technical Communication. (2014, October 30). Retrieved from
[Link]
Singer, W. (2001). Cambridge Technical Communicators. Retrieved from CTC:
[Link]
Video “What is Technical Communication?” [Link]
v=Fi5eZ2XLJc4&feature=[Link]
TECHNICAL WRITING
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TECHNICAL WRITING
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