Articles>Communication>Technical Writing

The Effect of the Organization’s Culture on Conversational Technical Writing

Lately, when I’m writing for training, I’m thinking of actually having a conversation, of talking to a real person. When I write other documents, for some reason I’m not thinking this way. It’s a problem because my user assistance content probably comes out dry as a desert in summer. In addition to not being as conscious of users as I should, perhaps there are a couple of organizational factors affecting my mindset.

The Importance of Communication Skills over Technical Skills

A developer who does some tech writing gets paid more than the full-time tech writer is because the first guy is still a developer. Developers get paid more than technical communicators most of the time (or all the time, most likely). I think a programmer with some interest or a bit of practice in technical writing getting a job ahead of experienced technical writers may be a signal that management (or HR) doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be looking for in a technical writer.

Addressing Resistance to Change in Policy and Procedure Writing

Policy writing and procedure writing is challenging because of the mechanics involved. Words must be carefully chosen; nuances must be considered. Understanding the mechanics of writing these documents is critical; however, an often overlooked aspect should be dealt with before the first word is written. How can policy and procedure writing tiptoe around the elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore?

Safety Warnings in Tractor Operation Manuals, 1920-1980: Manuals and Warnings Don't Always Work

This article studies the history of one of the most critical, unresolved problems in mechanized agriculture: Tractor operators do not read the operation manuals, particularly the safety warnings. The result: sustained death and injury of these operators for well over a century. The article tracks the emergence of warnings in tractor operator manuals found in the archives of the University of Nebraska Tractor Test Museum (1919-2007), describes efforts of manufacturers during this time to alert operators to dangers associated with tractors, and concludes with a summary of current research on tractor safety and the problem that remains unresolved: how to change the culture of farmers who use these implements, critical to agriculture production, to encourage them to read and follow safety practices.

White Paper Writing: Strategies for Success

White papers are a fundamental part of your marketing arsenal. And if you think technical writers don't need to worry about marketing, read on to see why white paper writing is an essential skill, and how to turn a ho-hum paper into a killer communications tool.

Why Tech Writers Need To Understand Business: Yet Another Example...

For some years, people, myself included, have noted the lack of interest, even disdain, that many tech writers have for business issues. This reduces these writers' ability to affect company decisions, including decisions that may affect them. Writers from fine arts or English backgrounds can rarely discuss cost-justification in finance terms, so they have little input on buying decisions.

Writing For the Market

If you’re a generalist, as most tech writers are, you write about many things in a variety of media with a number of objectives. Each new job involves determining who your audience is, what their needs are, and how your product or service can satisfy those needs. Then you need to recognize, understand, and adjust your writing so one time it appeals to the camper and the next time to the business owner.

Toward a Post-Technê: Or, Inventing Pedagogies for Professional Writing

This article examines the concept of technê in relation to situatedness. Technê is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of technê, the article moves toward the concept of post-technê, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts.

An Ergonomic Format for Short Reporting in Scientific Journals Using Nested Tables and the Deming's Cycle

The typical structure of a scientific report involves highly standardized sections. The key concept of a scientific report is the reproducibility of results. Because not only clarity but also conciseness is a tool for the advancement of science, a new format using nested tables is proposed with the aim of improving the design of short reports in scientific journals, namely short communications, short technical reports, case reports, etc. This format is based on the ergonomic philosophy of visual encyclopaedias (one topic, one page) and on the quality system of the Deming's cycle (plan--do--check--act) for continuous improvement. This new editing tool has several advantages over existing forms, because it provides quick and ergonomic, reader-friendly research reports that, at the same time, would render a saving in terms of available space and publishing costs of the printed version of scientific journals.

Writing in the Corporate Workplace: How to Keep Your Writing Healthy at Work

Make sure you know what you're talking about. This means understanding the big picture as well as sweating the small stuff. When interviewing subject matter experts, don't accept high-level answers to questions. Drill down to the details.

Modeling Rhetoric in Scientific Publications

Despite the advent of computer-centered ways of creating and accessing scientific knowledge, the format of the scientific research article has remained basically unchanged. We have developed a model of a more appropriate form for research publications to structure scientific articles, based on a rhetorical structure which is ubiquitous in (natural) science papers. The model has three components: defining rhetorical elements inside the documents, the identification of the argumentational relationships between these elements; and the connection of data elements and entities to external sources.

They'll Thank You for Sharing: Make Those Reports, Memos and White Papers Clear and Readable

Words, words, words. It seems as if we're being asked to write something every minute for every need and occasion. Your boss wants a report; your colleagues need a memo explaining a procedure; your clients send e-mails that need to be considered and answered; your company's products or services should be described in a descriptive white paper, and on and on. How can you deal with all that? Are there any general writing rules that apply to business writing of all sorts?

Marketing Writing for Technical Products

This workshop will examine the types of marketing materials that can give you creative experience. You'll learn how to adapt your skills and subject matter knowledge to these projects, how to plan and develop different types of materials, and how to identify opportunities for new types of communication.

Writing for Technical and Business Decision-Maker Audiences

The impact of any technical writing depends on the ability of the writer to understand and address the readers' concern, and to deliver highly usable documents that are relevant to the audience. Especially when readers make business decisions about technology, based on technical communication, writers need to develop best practices for conducting their own audience analysis and writing with audience needs in mind. This paper introduces several likely audiences a technical writer is likely to encounter and makes a few practical recommendations for communicating to them with the intended impact.

The Presentation of Safety Information in Product Manuals

Technical communicators may be asked to design and develop safety information for a product manual. During this process, technical communicators can add value to the presentation of safety information. In addition to adhering to a manufacturer’s internal guideline for the content and formatting of safety information, other factors can be considered as well. This paper presents the following factors: (1) an overview of common failure-to-warn allegations, (2) an analysis of current practices in automotive owner’s manuals for presenting safety information, and (3) an update on a new ANSI Z535 consensus standard for the presentation of safety information in product manuals.

The Art and Science of Policy and Procedure Writing and Publishing

This is an informational site dedicated to topics relevant to writing and publishing business process knowledge, especially policies and procedures. The objective of this site is to openly share information about writing and publishing policies and procedures and other forms of business knowledge.

Communication in Technology Transfer and Diffusion: Defining the Field

Provides an introduction to our field’s connections with technology transfer and diffusion. Technology transfer, the complex social process that moves technology from bench to market, drives global economic growth; technology diffusion, the market-driven process by which innovations are adopted and implemented, follows similar patterns. Indeed, technology transfer and diffusion may be considered synonymous with the phenomenon of growth in a global economy.

WhitePaperSource

WhitePaperSource is a rich information source for white paper enthusiasts. It contains news about the industry and a forum for discussing everything and anything about writing and marketing white papers.

Course Design and Content Organization: A Psychological Perspective

While a lot of effort is spent on designing an effective structure of the course, individual memory is seemingly the more untouched and somehow neglected aspect of our efforts to develop effective learning solutions. There is a need to add a psychological perspective of memory and retention/recollection to the way we design learning solutions.

Issues in Technical Writing

Now it is very important to recognize the vital role of a technical writer and services expected to provide to justify the requirements of this profession. Since technical writer is a sub category of technical communication, that involves other categories involved in documentation, like content writer, software configuration manager, technical editor, information designer and many more.

Technical Writing vs. Science Communication: What is the Difference, and Why Should We Care?

Many technical writer/editors at Los Alamos National Laboratory feel that we (and our colleagues at other institutions) do a good job of helping scientists communicate with each other, but we do not do so well in communicating with the general public. We have done a literature search and interviewed target audience members to learn how to better communicate science. Our research falls into the four following areas: the need for this special knowledge, characterization of audiences, communications strategies, and evaluation of the resulting communication products.

Memos

A memo is a concise document that conveys essential information about your accomplishment(s). All memos at Ohio University should be written in third person.

Current Status Of Business And Technical Writing Courses In English Departments

We have heard a great deal of talk in recent years about the growth of business and technical writing courses in English departments. But very little, if any, factual information exists on how much enrollments have grown and whether they are expected to grow in the near future. Furthermore, no study has attempted to assess the impact these relatively new, rapidly expanding courses are having and will continue to have on English departments and their faculty members.

Testing the Role of Technical Information in Public Risk Perception

Through experiments with simulated news stories about hazardous materials release, this study finds that providing technical detail about health effects may be less useful than keeping citizens current on the agency's strategies for dealing with problems and other behaviors by officials.

A Virtual Conversation on Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing

A collection of responses to Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin.

Legal Communication in Technical Communication Programs: Worth Thinking About?

What, if anything, should technical communication programs teach their students about the nature of law and the production of legal discourse? When is technical writing also legal writing, and vice versa; when is legal writing (really) technical? Are there distinctions worth maintaining and dissolving here? Do lawyers' relationships to, and problems with, legal writing contexts and processes parallel in important ways technical writers' relationships to, and problems with, technical writing contexts and processes? If they do, is a conversation between the disciplines worth institutionalizing, at least experimentally, in each other's programs?

Contracting and Consulting for Policies and Procedures Engagements

As the number of persons employed by some U.S. organizations declined since the late 1980s, so have employment opportunities for Policies & Procedures (P&P) practitioners. During this period, the number of contractors and consultants has increased to meet the needs of newly changed organizations. A useful way for P&P practitioners to learn how they can provide contracting and consulting services is to understand three roles in leveraging such services: an extra pair of hands, expert, and collaborator.

Expand Your Income by Writing for Magazines

Technical writers are well-equipped to write how-to articles for magazines. There are many markets for informational articles, and by creating a well-crafted query, a competent technical writer can get an assignment. This work is ideal for generating part-time income and it provides a more creative outlet for writers.. Getting ideas for good articles is as simple as following oneâ*™s own interests. Writing for magazines can become a lucrative â*œsecondâ** career for technical writers.

Medical Technical Writing

In a multibillion-dollar-per-yearcindustry, medical technical writers are well situated between companies that manufacture drugs and medical equipment and the federal government, which regulates the manufacture of drugs and medical equipment. The government requires that these companies produce specific types of documents, which must be of a very high standard. This situation creates lucrative opportunities for technical writers.

Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the Construction of the Information Age

Since the late 1970's we have been said to be living in the information age, and that name has stuck, with the phrase increasingly appearing throughout the closing decades of the millennium. The slogan, like all slogans, attempts to assert unity in the face of complexity; nonetheless, it captures, better than most such slogans, a dominant theme of almost all aspects of our everyday life. The slogan has its visual icons in advertising and journalism: binary bits flashing down wires and across the sky, tied to no location and independent of the humans who may need or use that information. Information has become an abstract universal, like atoms and electrons, to create or serve any entity, in no particular configuration, serving no particular purpose, gathered and used by no particular people (but of course provided or facilitated by specific companies who make this information their business). Information, however, is a human creation for human purposes, even if our devices now produce terrabytes of signals that travel only to other devices, never to be seen or touched by humans. This essay recovers a small piece of the history by which we constructed our understandings and uses of information, so that information has become pervasive in everyday life, needs, and action. It considers how information came to have major governmental and military meanings to the U.S. public during World War Two and after, and how an anti-nuclear test activist group asserted an alternative understanding of information to foster public opposition to government policy. This rhetorical reconstruction of information advanced a culture of citizen information, validated by citizen scientists to serve the needs and concerns of citizens, which pervaded the anti-war, environmental, and consumer movements that became our everyday reality in the second half of the century. Such citizen information embodies multiple assumptions about threats to everyday life, the necessity of reliable and up-to-date information for action to oppose the threats, large institutions whose interests are served by the threatening situation and which limit access to relevant information, science as an independent and objective source of information, and the responsibilities of a citizen to be informed.

Writing Material Safety Data Sheets Using the American National Standard for Hazardous Industrial Chemicals-MSDS Preparation

This article presents the history of the ANSI standard for preparation of Material Safety Data Sheets, and then provides a section-by-section guide to preparing MSDSs that comply with the standard.