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Dr. Mark Jordan ~ ENGL 2311:
Technical Writing
Assignments
You will find a Calendar
of Assignments in table form
after the following two introductory sections. If this is
your first visit to this link, please read the following sections on
rhetorical principles and on grading
criteria. The first section
discusses several crucial writing principles you need to be
aware of in order to do your best work on the specific
course assignments; the second section discusses the
particular criteria I will use to grade those assignments.
After your first visit, you may
click on the above underlined link to go immediately to the
Calendar of Assignments.
Classical Greek Rhetoric
&Technical Writing
Though it may seem like an unlikely
claim, in truth technical writing, website design, and any
other type of communication you can think of all conform, at
least fundamentally, to various elements of classical
rhetoric. These are concepts which date back millennia to
the ancient Greek culture and which are virtually universal
in their application to communication, whether it is
accomplished by the fairly traditional use of sentences and
paragraphs, or by the use of non-alphabetic signs such as
graphic images. It may have just occurred to you that a
typical Web site is made of a combination of both alphabetic
and graphic elements. Ironically, your understanding of how
these elements work together effectively is helped
tremendously by a deeper understanding of these ancient
principles of classical rhetoric. The following can serve as
a brief introduction to these.
Three Aims (Purposes) of
Writing
One rhetorical principle has to do
with the three basic aims of
any document (including a
website):
- To inform
your audience (sharing data, explaining processes)
- To express
your thoughts, opinions, and emotions (a diary is the
purest form)
- To persuade
others to share your opinions (to some degree and in some
way, everything anyone writes is persuasive)
Of these aims, the one least used in
this class is the expressive. The one most used is the
informative, which is the fundamental purpose of most
technical writing. However, I strongly believe that any
document, to some extent, also tries to persuade its
audience--even if you are trying to persuade that your
version of the information you present is accurate, and you
yourself are knowledgeable about it, that is still a form of
persuasion.
The Classical Modes of Writing
or Thinking
The formal documents you create will
also be written according to another rhetorical principle,
using one or more of what are called modes,
actually various mental approaches or patterns of thinking about any topic. The modes may also be
thought of as different approaches to problem solving. Here
are some of the more common modes:
- Narrative (telling a story to make a point)
- Cause/Effect (analyzing the causes and/or effects of
something)
- Comparison/Contrast (examining the similarities and/or
differences of two things, often to judge which is
better)
- Classification (breaking something--even people or the
things people do--into different parts, usually in order
to understand more about the topic)
- Definition
(often used to
examine a frequently misunderstood term or concept, or to
present a new, different, perhaps personal meaning for
it)
- And others.
Whereas in writing essays for a
freshman composition class you may have built an essay more
or less directly around a particular mode, you will not do
that so directly in this class. However, all the documents
you write will still use these modes, often in combination.
And in some cases, for example in an analytical report on
the causes of some problem on the job, the primary mode
is obvious. If you wish to study these modes in detail, you
can refer to my 1301 web page, Three-Part Writing
Format. Near the beginning
of that link is a navigation bar with links to descriptions
of various modes.
Two Ways to Consider Audience in
Technical Writing
One way to classify any audience
comes from classical rhetoric. Classical rhetoric teaches
that any audience or group of readers may be classified
according to their likely
attitude toward your writing. Thus, you should consider which of the
following three audiences you are addressing:
- An approving audience.
This audience is already
in basic agreement with what you have to say. It is
often, though not always, true that if your document's
purpose is predominantly to inform, then you can usually
assume that your readers are approving in that
sense--that is, ready to be informed. However, keep in
mind that even such a reader may be skeptical that you
know what you are talking about! Thus you must
persuade such a reader that you are knowledgeable.
This is done not with a fancy vocabularly, but rather
with clear and easily understood explanation. Such a
reader is also not altogether an approving audience, but
to some extent a skeptical or neutral one. As for
persuasive documents, they should never be written with
an approving audience in mind; such writing is what may
be called "cheerleading" and lends itself too easily to
sarcasm directed at the opposing position, and also to
sloppy logical support.
- A hostile
audience. This reader is
at the opposite end of the scale from the approving
reader. Usually you do not have to consider such an
audience for mainly informative documents, but sometimes
such an audience is unavoidable when writing persuasive
documents--for example, when writing a report on the
causes of a workplace problem, and knowing as you do so
that your findings may well anger or embarrass someone in
a position of authority. Such an audience is extremely
difficult to write for, and considerable expertise is
required; every word must be weighed. Even then, there is
only a slim likelihood of success. Few students are experienced in writing
for such an audience; for this course, you may disregard
this type audience.
- A neutral or skeptical
audience. This is the
proper audience for almost any document you write, at
least within this course. This audience is particularly
important to imagine while composing a persuasive
document, because visualizing an interested but undecided reader will encourage you as writer to
develop each logical point thoroughly. Even when writing
mainly informative documents, you should keep in mind
that your reader may justifiably be initially skeptical
of your expertise regarding your topic. A more difficult
subset of this audience which sometimes must be
considered is the disinterested reader. (Teachers deal with these all the
time, unfortunately! Don't let yourself be one!) While
you as writer cannot untimately control the level of your
reader's interest, nevertheless there are ways to
encourage it: mainly, by offering the reader a document
well
organized in support of a
single main point (its thesis); development which is
appropriate for the
reader's level of prior knowledge; and good clear structure on the sentence
level, free of careless
errors.
In technical writing there is also a
second way to classify the type of reader you are writing
for, and that is according to their level of prior knowledge about the
topic. This knowledge on
your part will affect both the terminology you may safely
use without offering definitions, the amount and type of
detailed data you supply, and even your sentence structure.
Here are three types of readers in regards to prior
knowledge:
- The expert
reader. This reader is
highly informed, for example a medical doctor reading a
nurse's or orderly's Emergency Room report. When writing
for such a reader, you can freely use "inside" or
"jargony" terms--specialized terms--which only the most
knowledgeabe reader could be expected to know. You may
also deliver data with a minimum of explanation to such a
reader.
- The moderately informed
reader. This reader knows
less than the expert reader, but more than a member of
the general public. Some terms may be used without
definition but others may not; the writer must give
consideration to which is which Similarly, data can
perhaps be supplied without a complete explanation, but
the extent of the omission of explanation must be
carefully considered. It
is better to err on the side of too much explanation,
rather than on the side of too little, especially in
documents affecting people's safety. Many, but not all, of the documents you
write in this course will be written with this audience
in mind.
- The layman
reader. This reader
should be conceived as reading on approximately an 8th
grade level--that is, similar to the level at which most
newspaper articles are written. An example of such a
reader might be a typical patient of a medical doctor,
reading a report of a biopsy on tissue suspected of being
cancerous. Any specialized terms must be clearly defined.
Any data must be fully yet simply explained; a document
for such a reader should never include "raw" (completely
unexplained) data. Also, some data should perhaps be
omitted or only given in appendix form, because it will
be largely meaningless and confusing to such a reader.
The Three Ways to Appeal to a
Reader
In your writing for this course
(both formal documents and email), either consciously or
unconsciously you will also draw on another ancient
rhetorical principle, that of the three appeals:
- The logical appeal (logos) is
the appeal you use any time you use logic to argue a
point. In general, logical argumentation follows a
certain pattern, sometimes called the "if/then/because"
pattern. You begin with some point which you figure your
audience will mostly agree to. Next you try to build on
that accepted starting point by pointing out some logical
conclusion that may be drawn from it: "If you
accept point A, then it
follows logically that you also should accept point B,
because B follows from A." For example, you might
argue that if you
agree that redheads sunburn easily, then it
makes sense for redheads to be extra careful to use
sunscreen. Usually, you will need to explain at some
length why B follows from A; in my example, because
without sunscreen redheads will burn badly. In this case,
that reasoning is so obvious that it could be omitted,
but mostly that is not the case. Besides logical
argumentation, logos is
also used when you argue using data such as facts or
statistics, a writing context which frequently arises in
technical writing.
- The emotional appeal (pathos) is when you appeal to the audience's
feelings rather than to their intellect. This is often
misused so as to conceal logical weaknesses in an
argument; in fact, this practice is so commonplace that
you may not be aware that there any other way to argue a
point. However, an excellent and ethical use of
pathos is when you as a writer may tell a
detailed story of an incident, something which actually
happened to some individual. The more detailed the
better, because that is the quality which generates the
emotional power that draws your reader into your story,
and so lets your story illustrate your argument. Both the
logical and emotional appeals work best when used
with each other.
In technical writing, the
logical appeal is appropriate far more often than the
emotional appeal. However, even in some technical
documents, there is often occasion for the presentation
of actual events, as proof that a certain situation
exists; certainly such real-life events bring
considerable emotional power with them.
- The ethical appeal (ethos) is
when you cite some other source or better-known authority
for support in making your point stick (not to be
confused with the usual meaning of the word "ethics").
Any quotation is an example of this appeal. You may well
find yourself using the ethical appeal, even quoting from
other students' email or citing opinions found in
websites. Especially in that latter case, it is wise to
remember that absolutely anyone can post a website, so be
careful not to automatically assume that whatever you
might find on the Web is reliable. In this course, you
may find that you are called upon to exercise the appeal
of ethos both by presenting information you have
gathered from published sources, but also information you
have gathered by doing what is called "primary research":
making phone calls, doing interviews, or circulating
questionaires.
Grading Criteria
The connection between the above
rhetorical principles and your grade on any particular major
assignment is that the more effectively you learn to use
these and other rhetorical principles, the better your grade
will be. Here, however, is a more specific list of
characteristics I look for in a well-written
document:
- A precise, consistent focus:
Don't switch to a similar
but different topic unconsciously; don't change from one
opinion or purpose to another unconsciously; make sure
your supporting arguments really support the point you
mean for them to.
- A clear pattern of
organization: All
documents, including technical documents, should have
effective introductions, main bodies, and conclusions.
How to do these things, and what to include in them, is
all covered in the Three-Part
Format link. You should
think of the information you find there as general
guidelines which are modified but not ignored by specific
technical documents of various purposes.
- Adequate development:
It is common for
inexperienced writers to assume the audience either
understands or agrees with them far more than the
audience really does. Thus student writers, assuming
understanding and agreement, stop short of adequately
developing their points. While it is true that a common
characteristic of technical documents is
conciseness--giving no more information than is
necessary--I find that many students have no clear sense
of how much that is, and frequently think they are being
concise when in fact they are leaving their readers
confused due to inadequate explanation. In technical
writing, then, effective development is closely linked to
the writer's understanding
of audience needs. Effective development is also closely
linked to the purpose of
the document, with
persuasive documents frequently needed greater
development than documents which merely need to
inform. Thirdly, effective development is
connected to the level of
difficulty of the topic,
a factor which applies in slightly different ways to both
informative and persuasive writing. All these factors are
complicated further by the frequent presence of both
primary and secondary
audiences, each with
different needs. It is possible to either overdo or
underdo development, but I tend to see underdevelopment
more often than its opposite, even in technical
writing.
- Effective error control:
This is the dreaded
"grammar part." I see grammatical errors as being similar
to static in a radio signal: a listener, or in this case
a reader, will overlook a certain amount, but at some
point the static becomes more noticeable than the signal
itself, and communication breaks down. Can grammatical
problems alone cause a student to fail in my class? It's
rare, but it's possible. The way to control this aspect
of your writing is to master effective proofing
strategies. Several are explained in the my Proofing
Strategies link in my
1301 course. I am happy to work with students personally
on specific errors, whether via email or (when possible)
in person.
- Last but certainly not least,
your assignments in this course will be graded on your
effective use of various formatting features. Some of the
major features you will study are the use of
headings and subheadings;
white space; graphics such as diagrams, charts, etc.;
and bulleted and numbered lists.
These are features which
are universal to technical writing, no matter what
specific document you may be producing.
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