Beginning my Technical Writing Experiences

December 20th

Hello classmates! It is around 11:30pm and I am posting in order to get my thoughts out about The Elements of Technical Writing reading assignments we’ve had thus far.

Chapter one provides a good amount of questions that one should consider before writing a technical document. We must think about what our purpose is for writing such a document. The two major purposes the text discusses are to inform and to argue. I can see why it is important that I learn how to write with these two purposes in mind. In the field of education, I think it is critical that I am able to write in such a way that informs my students about the class assignments, grades, expectations, etc. An argumentative purpose is also crucial for myself to keep in mind because I must not shy away from allowing my students to share and argue their opinions about literary preferences with myself or one another. Typically, I tend to think that the classroom will be where most of my writing will end up, but in actuality, there will be department meetings, school board meetings, and parent teacher conferences that I will also be involved in. In switching the situation both my purpose for writing and my audience will be altered.

Chapter two discusses the importance of audience and their situations. In my education courses my professors cannot seem to think of anything nearly as important as proper parent-teacher communication. We learn that we have to recognize that not all parents (my audience) are at high reading ability levels, so our emails and/or letters to home should be kept simplistic yet informative. We are also taught that we should share positive attributes about the parent’s child instead of focusing solely on their lesser strengths as students. Even in a letter about a child’s behavioral issue, by providing some type of positive feedback about the student, I would be proving my understanding of the audience and their situations. Parents shouldn’t only be informed of the negative instances regarding their child because that could make them less enthusiastic about reading the letters and emails I write to them.

Chapter three provides details about evaluating internet sources in order to conduct legitimate research. (We must do this ourselves in our second assignment for this course.) The other important topic in chapter three is about organizing the content of our technical documents. We must consider the reader’s needs when deciding on the amount and level of content we will provide in our technical documents. I find myself thinking of the books my father reads about trading stocks. One book he owns is Stock Investing for Dummies which I assume may have step by step processes of how to purchase stocks, how to sell stocks, etc. But my father also owns a plethora of other stock trading books that go into further details, provide real life examples, and give in depth explanations as to why the market rises and falls as it does. The content of the Dummies book is limited and created with the beginner audience in mind. The content of his other books, however, is much more in depth because the authors of those books can assume their audience is already interested in trading stocks and are now ready to get their trading habits down to a science.

Chapter four provides some information that seems to clash with what I previously learned about writing.

According to The Elements of Technical Writing, one should try to repeat key terms frequently in their technical documents and should avoid variant terms. This makes sense considering we want our readers to be able to follow the instructions, processes, etc. without confusion. This will be a challenging principle of technical writing for me to keep in mind because in writing my essays for English classes I am encouraged to use variant terms as a way to “spice up” my writing. I do not like repeating the same word multiple times in a paragraph or avoiding inflated language, but as a technical writer, I can see that it makes the reading easier for my audience.

From what we have read so far in our course’s textbook I believe I am beginning to understand what it takes to become a technical writer. There is still plenty to read and plenty of assignments to keep our minds on the main takeaways of the chapters!

-Anna J.