08 - Characteristics of Effective Technical Communication.pdf

Characteristics of Effective Technical Communication Scientific Writing 1 Seyyed Kamran Hosseini 7/10/2024  CONTENTS  Introduction  Accuracy  Clarity  Conciseness  Coherence  Appropriateness  Document Purpose  INTR...

Characteristics of Effective Technical Communication Scientific Writing 1 Seyyed Kamran Hosseini 7/10/2024  CONTENTS  Introduction  Accuracy  Clarity  Conciseness  Coherence  Appropriateness  Document Purpose  INTRODUCTION An essential element for the success and the quality of any product, service or business is the communication ways. It is basically a way to communicate with someone or multiple people in the most simple way possible. This aims to ensure that participants can make their technical documentation accurate, brief, clear and complete.  CHARACTERISTICS  Accuracy  Clarity  Conciseness  Coherence  Appropriateness  ACCURACY Accuracy refers to the truthfulness and the variety of a given statement. Proofreading avoid from spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. Use technology to catch errors or use dictionary when needed. Cultivate accuracy in your writing. Accuracy, which is the careful conforming to truth or fact, has three main aspects: Document accuracy Stylistic accuracy Technical accuracy Accuracy Document accuracy refers to the proper coverage of your topics in appropriate detail. Document accuracy is generally cultivated by a clear problem statement and by a preliminary outline. Stylistic accuracy concerns the careful use of language to express meaning. Accurate language requires the careful use of paragraph and sentence structure and word choice to describe and analyze your topics effectively. Technical accuracy requires stylistic accuracy but is not based solely on it. Technical accuracy depends on the writer's conceptual mastery of the subject and its vocabulary, as well as on his or her ability to analyze and shape data with a minimum of distortion.  CLARITY Clarity, which refers to ease of understanding, is a special problem in science and technology writing. You can increase the clarity of your material in several ways. Stylistic clarity is promoted by simple, direct language. Simplicity in language is obtained with directly worded sentences. Contextual clarity, in which the importance, authorization, and implications of your work are made available, also contributes to ease of understanding.  CONCISENESS Writers are often tempted to include everything that could be relevant to their subject, rather than merely everything that is relevant to the communication task at hand. The concise document is a piece of writing that conveys only the needed material.  COHERENCE Coherence is the quality of hanging together, of providing the reader an easily followed path. Writers promote coherence by making their material logically and stylistically consistent, and by organizing and expressing their ideas in specific patterns. Coherence can dramatically improve the reader's ability to understand your material by promoting its flow or readability.  Appropriateness Make your document appropriate to your goals in writing it, your audience's purpose in reading it, and the specific institutional contexts in which it is written and read. Because a reader's knowledge or experience determines the level of comprehension of technical material, appropriateness is largely determined by your audience. For example, a fact expressed in a mathematical equation may not be effective in a report addressed to a managerial audience. Document Purpose Explicit Purposes Implicit Purposes Statement of Objective Document Purpose Documents should be created for explicit purposes or goals that both the writer and the reader would readily agree on. Although there are many explicit purposes for creating a scientific or technical document, there are four general categories: To provide information To give instructions To persuade the reader To enact (or prohibit) something. Explicit Purpose Most scientific documents have as their principal purpose one or more of the following actions: To provide information To give instructions To persuade the reader To enact (or prohibit something) Whatever the general purpose of an overall document, certain sections of a document always have a specific purpose. The following table outlines the principal purpose usually associated with common document types and with sections in technical documents. Implicit Purposes Keep your implicit goals in mind when writing a document. In addition to explicit goals, writers almost always write with other unstated but still extremely important implicit goals. Common goals are To establish a relationship To create trust and establish credibility To document actions. To Establish a Relationship Communication not only conveys information but also establishes a relationship between speaker and listener, or writer and reader. A well-written letter of inquiry, for example, can begin a professional connection that may last for years. Readers of research reports often initiate long and fruitful correspondences with the authors. Even seemingly impersonal documentation and instructions can, if written carefully to addressing a user's need, establish a positive relationship between the user and the producer of the product. To Create Trust and Establish Credibility An underlying goal of all technical and scientific writing is to get the reader to trust the writer's credibility. Scientific and technical writing is based on precision. Accordingly, any technical or scientific document should justify the reader's confidence in the accuracy of its content, style, and organization. Carefully qualify statements that need to be qualified. Do not make claims that are merely suppositions. If your reader begins to doubt your ability or intent to analyze and shape data with a minimum of distortion, the document will no longer be effective.  To Document Actions Scientists, engineers, and managers often use writing to create permanent records of their thoughts and actions. One of the primary differences between most forms of written and spoken communication is that writing can be fairly permanent, whereas speech vanishes as soon as it is produced. Consequently, technical communication is often more effective when it is written down. Make important observations, suggestions, or objections in writing. Similarly, communicate important tasks and deadlines in documents such as project plans. Keeping precise records of experiments and procedures in notebooks is crucial to a project's overall accuracy and to establishing intellectual-property rights. Statement of Objective If appropriate, state your document's objective at the beginning. Readers of technical writing are often busy people; such a statement will alert them that it is important to read further. The following opening sentence from a memorandum by an engineer at Morton Thiokol warning his superiors of the problem that later caused the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger provides an example of a good statement of objective. This letter is written to ensure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-Ring erosion problem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint.