OBJECTIVES OF COMMUNICATION IN TECHNICAL

WRITING

Module 2
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able:
1. Apply the objectives of technical writing.
2. Exhibit mastery of the use of proper punctuation, grammar, syntax, and spelling.

Introduction
With the emergence of increasingly varied users, audiences and customers of
technical material and content, the roles of technical writers are being redefined
accordingly. Therefore, technical writers need to keep some key objectives in mind to
produce precise, compelling and succinct technical communication material.
Objectives of Communication in Technical Writing
1. Clarity. Be sure that when you write a communication such as a memo, letter, or
report it must be clear to your readers, otherwise you will be wasting their time.
When your readers do not understand your point or cannot follow your train of
thought, they must write you a follow-up inquiry to determine your needs. Again,
this wastes their time. Once you receive the inquiry, you must rewrite your
correspondence, trying to clarify your initial intentions.
a. Provide specific details.
When writing technical correspondence, you should supply specific,
quantified information. Avoid using vague, abstract adjectives or
adverbs, such as some or recently. Your readers might interpret these
words in different ways. Your goal as a technical writer is to
communicate clearly. State your exact meaning through specific,
quantified word usage.

BAD: “Put enough air in your tires.” (How much air is “enough”?) Vague
word
GOOD: “Fill your tires to 32 pounds per square inch.” Specific detail

b. 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.
BAD: “We bought a new machine to solve the problem.”
 • Who is “we”?
• What is the “new machine”?
• When was the purchase made?

GOOD: “The marketing department bought a new laser printer (Php.

5,595.00) on June 10 for our production room. This printer will produce
double-side, color copies unlike our prior printer. ”

c. 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.

BAD: “We are cognizant of your need for issuance of citations

pursuant to code 18-B1 CPR violations.”

GOOD: “We know you need to send citations because of code

18- B1 Continuing Property Record violations. ”

● The following is a list of difficult, out-of-date terms, and the

modern alternatives:

d. Using Acronyms, Abbreviations and Jargons

Acronyms are simply abbreviations formed from the initial
letters of other words and pronounced as a word.
● Consider the examples below:

e. Appropriateness
Words are appropriate when they are suited to your subject, audience, and
purpose. Choices to accommodate audience and purpose affect not only diction, but
tone and style.
 Popular words include those words that are common to the whole populace, while
Learned words are those words which are more likely to be used by educated
people and in formal settings. Distinguishing when to use these words is essential.
● Consider the examples below:

Jargons are highly abstract, often technical diction that shows fondness for
learned words. These are words used by a certain set of people with common interest
or in the same profession. Persons not in this kind of group do not find these technical
words easy to understand. Words commonly used by lawyers, physicians, engineers or
businessmen are meaningful only to these sets of professionals. Ordinary persons in
our society can hardly understand these technical terms.
● Consider the examples below:

f. Use verbs in the active voice versus the passive voice.

Technical writers want to communicate as efficiently as possible, and active
voice is more straightforward and is stronger than passive voice.
● Consider the examples below:

2. Conciseness. Conciseness provides detail in fewer words. Conciseness is important

for these reasons:
a. Conciseness Saves Time

Remember how time consuming technical writing is in the work

environment? Workers spend approximately 12 hours per week writing
and additional time reading and revising others’ writing. Conciseness in
writing can help save some of this time. If you write concisely, you can
save yourself time and take up less of your readers’ time.
b. Conciseness Aids Clarity
 Concise writing can aid comprehension. If you dump an enormous
number of words on your readers, they might give up before finishing your
correspondence or skip and skim so much that they miss a key concept.
Wordy writing will lead your readers to think, “Oh no! I’ll never be
able to finish that. Maybe I can skim through it. I’ll probably get enough
information that way.” Conciseness, on the other hand, makes your writing
more appealing to your readers. They’ll think, “Oh, that’s not too bad; I can
read it easily.” If they can read your correspondence easily, they will read
it with greater interest and involvement. This, of course, will aid their
comprehension.
Guidelines to Achieve Conciseness:
a. Limit Paragraph Length
An excessively long paragraph is ineffective. In a long paragraph, you
force your reader to wade through many words and digest large amounts of
information. This hinders comprehension. In contrast, short, manageable
paragraphs invite reading and help your reader understand your content. As
a rule of thumb, a paragraph in a technical document should consist of: (a)
No more than 4 to 6 typed lines; or (b) no more than 50 words.

b. Limit Word and Sentence Length

We can determine how foggy your paragraph is, by assessing it
according to Robert Gunning’s fog index.
The Fog Index
1. Count the number of words in successive sentences. Once you reach
approximately 100 words, divide these words by the number of sentences. This
will give you an average number of words per sentence.
2. Now count the number of long words within the sentences that you have just
reviewed. Long words are those with three or more syllables. Discount the proper
names, long words that are created by combining shorter words, and three
syllable verbs created by -ed or -es endings.
3. Finally, to determine the fox index, add the number of words per sentence and
the number of long words. Then multiply your total; by 0.4
Ways to Lower a Potentially High Fox Index:
1. Use the Meat Cleaver Method of Revision. Way of cutting the sentences in half or
thirds to make sentences more concise and easier to understand.
Version 1.
To maintain proper stock balances of respirators and canister elements and to
ensure the identification of physical limitations which may negate an individual’s
previous fit test, a GBC-16 Respirator Request and Issue Record will need to be
submitted for each respirator requested for use.
 If we use the meat cleaver approach, we can make this sentence more digestible:
Version 2.
Please submit a GBC-16 Respirator Request and Issue Record for each
requested respirator. We then can maintain proper respirator and canister element
stock balances. We also can identify physical limitations which may negate an
individual’s previous fit-test.
2. Avoid Shun Words. These are words ending in -tion or -sion - words ending in a
shun sound.

3. Avoid Camouflaged words. These words are similar to Shun words. In both
instances, a keyword is buried in the middle of surrounding words (usually helper
verbs or unneeded prepositions).
Consider these examples:

4. Avoid Expletive Patterns. Another way to write more concisely is to avoid the
following:
- there is, are, was, were, will be
- it is, was

Expletive sentence: There are five people who will work for Philex Mines.
Revised: Five people will work for Philex Mines. The original sentence contains
nine words; while the revision has six.

5. Omit Redundancies. Redundancies are words that say the same thing.
Conciseness is achieved by saying something once rather than twice.

For example, in each of the following instances, the boldface words are redundant:
 During the year of 2005 (Obviously 2005 is a year; the words the year of are
redundant.)
In the month of December (As in the preceding example, the month of is redundant;
what else is December?)
Needless to say (If it’s needless to say, why say it?)

6. Avoid Wordy Phrases. Sentences may be wordy not because you have been
redundant or because you have used shun words, camouflaged words, or
expletives. Sometimes sentences are wordy simply because you’ve used wordy
phrases.

3. Accuracy. Clarity and conciseness are primary objectives of effective technical

writing.
However, if your writing is clear and concise but incorrect—grammatically or
textually—then you have wasted your time and destroyed your credibility. To be
effective, your technical writing must be accurate.
Accuracy in technical writing requires that you proofread your text. In addition to
all the other errors, it should be “Dog and Cat Shop,” of course. The errors make the
writer look incompetent.

● To ensure accurate writing, use the following proofreading tips:

1. Let someone else read it—We miss errors in our own writing for two
reasons. First, we make the error because we don’t know any better.
Second, we read what we think we wrote, not what we actually wrote.
Another reader might help you catch errors.

2. Use the gestation approach—Let your correspondence sit for a while.

Then, when you read it, you’ll be more objective.

3. Read backwards—You can’t do this for content. You should read

backwards only to slow yourself down and to focus on one word at a time
to catch typographical errors.

4. Read one line at a time—Use a ruler or scroll down your PC screen to

isolate one line of text. Again, this slows you down for proofing.
 5. Read long words syllable by syllable—How is the word responsibility
misspelled? You can catch this error if you read it one syllable at a time
(re-spon-si-bil-i-ty).

6. Use technology—Computer spell checks are useful for catching most

errors. They might miss proper names, homonyms (their, they’re, or there)
or incorrectly used words, such as device to mean device.

7. Check figures, scientific and technical equations, and

abbreviations—If you mean Php 400,000, don’t write Php 40,000.
Double-check any number or calculations. If you mean to say HCl
(hydrochloric acid), don’t write HC (a hydrocarbon).

8. Read it out loud—sometimes we can hear errors that we cannot see. For
example, we know that an outline is incorrect. It just sounds wrong. An
outline sounds better and is correct.
9. Try scattershot proofing—Let your eyes roam around the page at
random. Sometimes errors look wrong at a glance. If you wander around
the page randomly reading, you often can isolate an error just by
stumbling on it.
10. Use a dictionary—If you are uncertain, look it up. If you commit errors in
your technical writing, your readers will think one of two things about you
and your company: (a) they will conclude that you are stupid, or (b) they
will think that you are lazy. In either situation, you lose. Errors create a
negative impression at best; at worst, a typographical error relaying false
figures, calculations, amounts, equations, or scientific or medical data can
be disastrous.
● Make Your Message Convincing.
Readers will consider worthless any message that is trite, slangridden,
overstated, or devious. Observe the suggestions here to make your technical writing
more convincing (Abelos, 2005):
1. Avoid triteness. Here are just a few of the countless expressions worn out
by overuse:
first and foremost
it is interesting to note
needless to say

2. Avoid slang. Groups often coin expressions. Slang are informal nonstandard
vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words and
extravagant, forced or facetious figures of speech, according to Webster’s
Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary.
Examples:
 grunts - soldiers speak of it as low-ranking combat troops
stonewall - when they speak of refusal to cooperate with an investigation

3. Avoid Overstatement. Writers lose credibility when they exaggerate to make

a point. Be cautious in using words such as best, biggest, most, worst and the
like.
Example:
Overstated: If you try mountain hiking, you will find it to be one of the most
memorable experiences of your life.
Revised: If you try mountain hiking, you will treasure it.

4. Avoid Unsupportable Generalization. Unsupported or sweeping

generalizations harm your credibility because they have no way of being
proved.
Example:
Sweeping: Television is rotting everyone’s brain.
Revised: Many authorities argue that television is one of the causes of
declining literacy.

5. Avoid Misleading Euphemisms. Euphemisms are expressions that are

aimed at politeness or at making unpleasant seem less offensive.
Examples:
Instead of lying to the public, the government engages in a policy of
disinformation or news black out. Instead of wars and nuclear missiles, we
have conflicts and peacekeepers.
6. Be Concrete and Specific. General words name broad classes of things,
such as job, car or person. Such terms usually need to be clarified by more
specific ones.

Examples:
Job- Senior Accountant, Philex Mining Corporation
Car- Dark blue Mercedes Benz

The more specific your words, the sharper the meaning.

7. Keep the language simple. As a technical writer, say it in plain English.

 Try not to use three syllables when one syllable will do. Trade for less.

4. Organization

If you are clear, concise, and accurate, but no one can follow your train of
thought because your text rambles, you still haven’t communicated effectively.
Successful technical writing also must be well organized.
Here is an analogy to explain the importance of organization. Most artists cannot
just dip a brush in paint and then splatter that paint on canvas. People want to make
sense of what they see, and splattered images cause confusion. The same applies to
technical writing. As the writer, you cannot haphazardly throw words on the page and
expect readers to understand you clearly. In contrast, you should order that information
on the page logically, allowing your readers to follow your train of thought.
No one method of organization always works. Following are five patterns of
organization that you can use to help clarify content.
a. Spatial
If you are writing to describe the parts of a machine or a plot of
ground, you might want to organize your text spatially. You would describe
what you see as it appears in space—left to right, top to bottom, inside to
outside, or clockwise. These spatial sequences help your readers
visualize what you see and, therefore, better understand the physical
qualities of the subject matter. They can envision the layout of the land
you describe or the placement of each component within the machine. For
example, let’s say you are a contractor describing how you will refinish a
basement. Your text reads as follows:
At the basement’s north wall, I will build a window seat 7' long by 2' wide
by 2' high. To the right of this seat, on the east wall, I will build a desk 4'
high by 5' long by 3' wide. On the south wall, to the left of the door, I will
build an entertainment unit the height of the wall including four, 4' high by
4' wide by 2' deep shelving compartments. The west wall will contain no
built-ins. You can use this space to display pictures and to place furniture.
Note how this text is written clockwise, uses points of the compass
to orient the reader, and includes the transitional phrases “to the right” and
 “to the left” to help the reader visualize what you will build. That’s spatial
organization.

b. Chronological
Whereas you would use spatial organization to describe a place,
you would use chronology to document time or the steps in an instruction.
For example, an emergency medical technician (EMT) reporting services
provided during an emergency call would document those activities
chronologically.
At 1:15 P.m., we arrived at the site and assessed the patient’s
condition, taking vitals (pulse, respiration, etc.). At 1:17 P.M., after
stabilizing the patient, we contacted the hospital and relayed the vitals. By
1:20 P.M., the patient was on an IV drip and en route to the hospital. Our
vehicle arrived at the hospital at 1:35 P.M. and hospital staff took over the
patient’s care.
Chronology also would be used to document steps in an instruction.
No times would be provided as in the EMT report. In contrast, the
numbered steps would denote the chronological sequence a reader
must follow.
c. Importance
Your page of text is like real estate. Certain areas of the page are
more important than others—location, location, location. If you bury key
data on the bottom of a page, your reader might not see the information.
In contrast, content placed approximately one-third from the top of the
page and twothirds from the bottom (eye level) garners more attention.
The same applies to a bulleted list of points. Readers will focus their
attention on the first several points more than on the last few.
Knowing this, you can decide which ideas you want to emphasize
and then place that information on the page accordingly. Organize your
ideas by importance. Place the more important ideas above the less
important ones.
5. Ethics
As a technical writer, you have an ethical responsibility to write the truth.
Here is the scenario. You are a technical writer responsible for producing a
maintenance manual. Your boss tells you to include the following sentence:
Note: Our product has been tested for defects and safety by trained technicians.
When read literally, this sentence is true. The product has been tested, and the
technicians are trained. However, you know that the product has been tested for only 24
hours by technicians trained on site without knowledge of international regulations.
So where’s the problem? As a good employee, you are required to write what
your boss told you. Right? Even though the statement is not completely true, legally you
can include it in your manual. Correct?
The answer to both questions is no! Actually, you have an ethical responsibility to
write the truth. Your customers expect it, and it is in the best interests of your company.
Equally important is that including the sentence in your manual is illegal. Although the
sentence is essentially true, it implies something that is false. Readers will assume that
the product has been thoroughly tested by technicians who have been correctly trained.
Thus, the sentence deceives the readers.
Knowing this, however, does not make writing easy. Ethical dilemmas exist in
corporations. The question is, what should you do when confronted with such
problems?
● One way to solve this dilemma is by checking your actions against these three
concerns: legal, practical, and ethical. For example, if you plan to write operating
instructions for a mechanism, will your text be :
1. Legal, focusing on liability, negligence, and consumer protection laws? 2.
Practical, because dishonest technical writing backfires and can cause the
company to lose sales or to suffer legal expenses?
3. Ethical, written to promote consumer welfare and avoid deceiving the end
user? (Bremer et al. 1987, 76–77)
These are not necessarily three separate issues. Each interacts with the other.
Our laws are based on ethics and practical applications.
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https://www.scribd.com/document/218630888/Business-Correspondence
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