Processes and Guidelines in Technical Writing Part (2)

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Types of Audiences

Experts

Technicians

Executives

Nonspecialists

Audience Analysis

Audiences, regardless of category, must also be analyzed in terms of characteristics such as the following:

Background-knowledge, experience, training

Needs and interests

Other demographic characteristics

Audience analysis can get complicated by at least two other factors:

More than

Wide variability in an audience one audience

Add information readers need to understand your document.

Omit information your readers do not need.

Change the level of the information you currently have.

Add examples to help readers understand.

Change the level of your examples.

Change the organization of your information.

Strengthen transitions.

Write stronger introductions—both for the whole document and for major sections.

Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups.

Change sentence style and length.

Work on sentence clarity and economy.

Use more or different graphics.

Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks.

Add cross-references to important information.

Use headings and lists.

Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style.

This section shows you a step-by-step method for: "translating" technical discussions, that is, specific techniques you can use to make difficult technical discussions easier for nonspecialist readers to understand.

The audience of the report and its background

The needs or uses the audience has for the report

The event, circumstance, or situation that requires the report to be written

Help to decide:

What information to include in the report

What information to exclude from the report

How to discuss the information you do include in the report

Definitions of unfamiliar terms

Comparisons to familiar things

Elaborating the process

Providing descriptive detail

Providing illustrations

Providing examples and applications

Shorter sentences

 a) b) c)

Stronger transitions and overviews

Repetition of key words

Transition words and phrases.

Reviews of topics covered and topics to be covered

The "in-other-words" technique

Posing rhetorical questions

Explaining the importance

Providing historical background

Reviewing theoretical background

Providing the human perspective

Combining the translating techniques

SEE the attatched Word file and

REFER to the book when writing the report.

Thank You!

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