Technical writing versus technical writing

Two terms, two job categories, 'technical writer' and 'technical author' are discussed in terms of industrial and business requirements and standards. A distinction between 'technical writing' and technical 'writing' is made. The term 'technical editor' is also considered. Problems inherent in the design of programs to prepare and train students for these jobs are discussed. A closer alliance between industry and academia is suggested as a means of preparing students with competent technical communication skills (especially writing and editing skills) and good technical skills

Technical report writing

This manual covers the fundamentals of organizing, writing, and reviewing NASA technical reports. It was written to improve the writing skills of LeRC technical authors and the overall quality of their reports

Whys and hows of in-house writing

The combining of requisite technical knowledge with requisite writing ability is addressed. Considerations in the development of in-house writing courses, in-plant training, are presented and evaluated. Specific problems in past methodology are also detailed. It is suggested that teachers of technical writing should be technical people themselves, preferably with working experience in industry or business; the training provided should be user-oriented, not theory oriented

A narrative approach to collaborative writing: A business process model

Narratives have been used in the past to enhance technical documents such as research proposals by implementing a single-user writing tool called CANS (Computer-Aided Narrative Support). This study has now been extended to collaborative writing (CW); another area that can greatly benefit from a narrative-based writing tool. Before implementing such an asynchronous, multi-user system, however, it was imperative to do a concrete design for it. Therefore, after studying existing CW tools and strategies, a concise business process (BP) model was designed to describe the process of narrative-based CW. This paper introduces narrative-based CW for technical authors, the BP model for it and discusses the benefits of such an implementation on particular areas of research, such as the development of Grid applications

Program analysis for documentation

A program analysis for documentation (PAD) written in FORTRAN has three steps: listing the variables, describing the structure and writing the program specifications. Technical notes on editing criteria for reviewing program documentation, technical notes for PAD, and FORTRAN program analyzer for documentation are appended

The composing process in technical communication

The theory and application of the composing process in technical communications is addressed. The composing process of engineers, some implications for composing research for the teaching and research of technical communication, and an interpretation of the processes as creative experience are also discussed. Two areas of technical communications summarized concern: the rhetorical features of technical communications, and the theoretical background for a process-based view, a problem-solving approach to technical writing

Some technical writing skills industry needs

It is suggested that engineers and other technical students be taught three classes of skills in technical writing. First, "Big Picture Things", which includes: the importance of clear writing, the wide scope of writing, the wide scope of writing tasks that will be faced in industry, and the principles of organization of technical materials such as; how to analyze, classify, partition, and interpret. Second, "Writing Procedures", which encompasses: how to get words on paper efficiently and team-write. Third, "Writing Details", in which two considerations are important: how to achieve precision in the use of language and the aspects of style. Three problems in style are cited: the problem of sentence transition, overuse of attributive adjectives, and verbosity in paragraph structure. The most important thing in technical writing is considered to be functionality, economy and clarity

Teaching audience analysis to the technical student

Teaching audience analysis, as practiced in a technical writing course for engineering students, is discussed. Audience analysis is described as the task of defining the audience for a particular piece of writing and determining those characteristics of the audience which constrain the writer and effect reception of the message. A mature technical writing style that shows the tension produced when a text is written to be read and understood is considered in terms of audience analysis. Techniques include: (1) conveying to students the concept that a reader with certain expectations exist, (2) team teaching to preserve the context of a given technical discipline, and (3) assigning a technical report that addresses a variety of readers, thus establishing the complexity of audience oriented writing

Narrative-based writing for coherent technical documents

Narrative-based writing is a technique that was developed to address the lack of support for document coherence. The technique depends on the production of a story-like executive summary of the document called a DN (Document Narrative). This is then analysed using a discourse theory called Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) which helps further to correct any lapses in coherence in the DN before proceeding to use it to write the document. Previous papers have described the technique briefly, alongside discussions of the ongoing software development to incorporate narrative support in writing tools. It has now become apparent that the technique itself needs to be explained in greater detail. This is the purpose of this paper. Here, narrative-based writing and the reasoning behind it is described. This is followed by a description of a user experiment conducted in May 2006 to evaluate narrative-based writing and discover areas in which it could be improved. The positive feedback from the volunteers has motivated us to continue to refine and simplify the technique