OBJECTIVES OF TECHNICAL WRITING
Clarity
Technical
writing must be clearly worded and developed to avoid confusing its audience.
Conciseness
Concise
technical writing saves time for both writers and readers.
Accuracy
Avoid
grammatical errors by proofreading your work so that you will communicate
effectively and appear professional.
Organization
Organize
your thoughts to help your readers better understand your documents.
CLARITY
The
ultimate goal of good technical writing is clarity. If you write a memo,
letter, or report that is unclear to your readers, then what have you
accomplished?
You
have wasted time. If your readers must write you a follow-up inquiry to
determine your needs, this wastes their time. Once you receive the inquiry, you
must rewrite your correspondence, trying to clarify your initial intentions.
You have now written twice to accomplish the same goal. This wastes your time.
To
avoid these time-consuming endeavors, write for clarity. But how do you do
this?
Provide Specific Detail
One
way to achieve clarity is by supplying specific, quantified information. If you
write using vague, abstract adjectives or adverbs, such as some or recently,
your readers will interpret these words in different ways. The adverb recently
will mean thirty minutes ago to one reader, yesterday to another, and last week
to a third reader. This adverb, therefore, is not clear. The same applies to an
adjective like some. You write, “I need some information about the budget.”
Your readers can only guess what you mean by some. Do you want the desired
budget increase for 2005, the budget expenditures for 2000, the allotted budget
increase for 2006, the guidelines for implementing a budget increase, the
budgeted allotment for travel, or the explanation for the budget decrease for
training?
Answer the Reporter’s Questions
A
second way to write clearly is to answer the reporter’s questions—who, what,
when, where, why, and how. The best way we can emphasize the importance of
answering these reporter’s questions is by sharing with you the following memo,
written by a highly placed executive, to a newly hired employee. Memo is given
on page 49.
Use Easily Understandable Words
Another
key to clarity is using words that your readers can understand easily. Avoid
obscure words and be careful when you use acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon.
Avoiding Obscure Words
A
good rule of thumb is to write to express, not to impress; write to
communicate, not to confuse. If your reader must use a dictionary, you are not
writing clearly. Try to make sense of the following examples of unclear
writing.
The
following rules are to be used when determining whether or not to duplicate
messages:
•Do
not duplicate non-duplicatable messages.
•A
message is considered non-duplicatable if it has already been duplicated.
Your
job duties will be to ensure that distributed application modifications will
execute without abnormal termination through the creation of production JCL
system testing.
These
examples were written by businesspeople who were trying to communicate
something. The examples are filled with outdated terms that are difficult to
understand.
Obscure Words Alternative Words
Aforementioned
already discussed initial first in lieu of instead of accede agree as per your
request as you requested issuance send this is to advise you I’d like you to
know subsequent later in as much as because ascertain find out pursuant to
after forward mail
cognizant
know endeavor try remittance pay disclose show attached herewith attached
pertain to about supersede replace obtain get
Impressive
writing is correspondence we can understand easily. A modern thrust in
technical writing is to write the way you speak—unless you speak poorly. Try to
be casual, almost conversational.
Using Acronyms, Abbreviations, and
Jargon
In
addition to obscure words, a similar obstacle to readers is created by
acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon.
We
have all become familiar with common acronyms such as scuba (self contained
underwater breathing apparatus), radar (radio detecting and ranging),
NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), FICA (Federal
Insurance
Contributions Act), and MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)— single words
created from the first letters of multiple words. We are comfortable with
abbreviations like FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), JFK (John F.
Kennedy), NFL (National Football League), IBM (International Business Machines),
and LA (Los Angeles). Some jargon (in-house language) has become so common that
we reject it as a cliché. Baseball jargon is a good example. It is hard to
tolerate sportscasters who speak baseball jargon, describing line drives as
“frozen ropes” and fast balls as “heaters.”
However,
more often than not, acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon cause problems, not
because they are too common but because no one understands them. Your technical
writing loses clarity if you depend on them. You might think your readers
understand them, but do they?
