EN 9 LESSON 1

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EN 9TECHNICAL WRITING

LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING

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DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL

WRITING• Technical writing is a written

communication about a scientific ortechnical subject to a specific reader or

group of readers for the purpose of givingcertain information.

• It is also called scientific writing becauseit deals with a topic in any of the sciences.

These sciences are classified intobiological (botany, zoology, microbiology,etc.)

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physical (physics, chemistry, geology,

ecology, astronomy, etc.).

Moreover, it also deals with technical topics

such as electronics, refrigeration,

airconditioning, and the like. It is usually

addressed to a specific reader, intelligent

enough to grasp the specific information

given.

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WRITING PARADIGM

• Based on the SPEAKING paradigm

devised by Dell Hymes, this writer

formulated his paradigm for writing.

• To make any speaking engagement

successful, the speaker should consider

the elements that comprise the paradigm

of Hymes, as follows:

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S – setting (where and when) – time and place

P – participants (who) – interlocutorsE – end (why) – purpose

A – act (how) – manner

K – key (how formal) – formalityI – instrument (with what instrument or medium)

medium or instrument ued in communication

N – norm (what) – subjectG – genre (which kind) – exposition,

description, narration, or argumentation.

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W – width (to what extent) – scope

R – register (what language) – words used in the

field (computerese, medicalese, legalese, journalese, commercialese, diplomatese,

teacherese, telegraphese, etc.)

I – intention (why) – purpose

T – tenor (what conditions) – the tone and

circumstances surrounding the writing

I – information (what) – subject

N – needs of reader/s (who needs/what needs)recipient/s’ expectations

G – genre (which kind) – exposition, description,

narration or argumentation

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QUALITIES OF TECHNICAL

WRITING

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T – technology driven – He keeps abreast with

technological advances.

E – effectual – He produces the desired results.

C – curious – He is desirous to learn about differentthings.

H – honest – He tells the truth and does not resort to

plagiarism.

N – neutral – He is objective, impartial, and free from

bias.

I – intelligent – He uses his wit.

C – careful – He takes pain in doing his work.A – active – He displays tireless energy during the

course of his writing.

L – logical – He applies the principles of logic in his

writing

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W – workmanly – He is skillful in technical writing

R – resourceful – He makes us of primary

(persons, organizations, plants and animals,artifacts, documents, etc.) and secondary

(books, periodicals, internet, etc.) sources of

information.

I – interesting – He arouses the interest of hisreaders.

T – thorough – He comes up with a complete work

E – ethical – He conforms with the code ofprofessional ethics.

R – responsible – He does his work well and

without any prodding from others.

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TECHNICAL WRITING VERSUS

LITERARY WRITING

POINT OF

CONTRAST

TECHNICAL

WRITING

LETERARY WRITING

1. subject

2. Readership3. Purpose

4. Language

5. Style

6. Tone

7. Point of view

8. Emotionality

9. Objectivity

10. form/format

Scientific/technical

SpecificInformative/persuasive

Literal/denotative

Impersonal

Heavy/serious

Usually third person,

sometimes second

person

Unemotional

Objective/neutral

formal

Non-scientific/non-

technical

GeneralEntertaining

Figurative/connotative

Personal

Light/amusing

First person or third

person

Emotional

Subjective/biased

informal

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Technical writing deals with a science topic or

a technical subject.

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If a technical writer focuses on cats, then histreatment is science-oriented, that is,biological.

His readers must be biological students,teachers, and specialists or zookeepers andother interested parties.

His aim is to inform his readers about cats,using words in their literal sense (dictionary-based).

He makes us of an impersonal style, serious

tone, and third person (it, they) point of view.His writing is devoid of emotions and biases; it

conforms with the standard format.

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• Literary writers can also have cats astopics; however, their treatment isdifferent from that of technical writers.

• For example, Japanese writers, LadySarashina and Lady Shonagon, wroteabout cats in the form of short stories.

• Using a personal style and an amusingtone, they wrote emotion-laden storiesserving to amuse English readers ofalmost all ages.

• Both made use of figures of speech, but

one used the first-person point of viewand the other used the third-person pointof view.

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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR

CREATING JARGON

METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLES

Acronymy Putting together the initial

letters of two or more words

to form new, words

IT, DNA, PMA, CFC, CCP,

UE, PNOC,PROC, APEC,

PEA, CAS, ASEAN,

UNESCO, PPA, VCO, POEA,

PACUCOA, ASAIHL, PAWS,GABRIELA, AIDS, ATOM,

LASER, SCUBA, RSVP

Affixing/

Adding

Adding affixes (prefixes

and/or suffixes) to roots

(words or combining forms)to form new words

Reincarnation, abiotic,

predetermined, avoids, post-

war, war-like, heroine,infixes, synonymous, pre-

natal, immortality, restated,

unchristian, ejects,

contributions, remits.

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CREATING JARGON


Blending/

Cannibalizing

Removing some parts of

two or more words and

putting together the

remaining parts to form newwords.

Sitcom, domsat, scifi, polsci,

trapo, comsci, psywar, spork,

smog, skorts, internet,

modem, bit, brunch, biotech,infotech, walkathon,

escalator, simulcast

Borrowing Using words from other

languages with or without

retaining the original

spelling of such words,

Boonduck (bundok), pizza,

ballet, vaudeville, vodka,

champagne, precis, troika,

café, ikebana, kamikaze,

politburo, gesellschaft,

malermeister, blitzkrieg,

lasagna, kimchi

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CREATING JARGON

METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLESClipping/

Chipping/

Truncating

Removing the head part,

tall part, or both parts of the

word to form a new word

Ref, fridge, lib, lab, math,

chem, gen, zoo, bio, gym,

jeep, bus, wig, combo, demo,

chemo, lipo, senti, hippo,

polio, amoo, emo, nuke,

mike, bike, archi, opto,promo, revo, derma, antibac,

indie

Compounding Putting together two or

more words to form new

words

Solid Compounds (without

hypen or space)

- footnote, headword, within;Hyphenated Compounds

(with hyphen/s) – editor-in-

chief, son-in-law, sergeant-

at-arms; Spaced Compounds

(with space/s) – ticket office,

sound effects

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CREATING JARGON


Converting Changing the part of

speech of words without

changing the spelling of

such words to form new

words

Nounizing – turning verbs

and adjectives into nouns.

Swimming is her hobby, The

old should be respected.

Verbizing – turning nounsand adjectives into verbs.

Don’t just paint it; Sniclair it.

Adjectivizing – turning nouns

and verbs into adjectives,

father image, wash and wear

clothes.

Hybridizing Putting together forms from

two or more languages to

form new words

Totalinis, patatasnack,

Paleocene, Holocene, bakya

crowd, bahala-na attitude,

manana habit.

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CREATING JARGON


Immortalizing Using people’s names to

form new words

Pasteurization, wattage,

Maoism, guillotine,

Eustachian tube, Lamaze

method, Phytagorean,theorem, Marxism,

Buddhism, Leningrad

Recycling Using words not in their

original sense to form new

words

Fly-over, floor price, ceiling

price, door prize, Christmas

tree, (eng’g), diaper

(architecture)

Back Formation Removing affixes to form

new words

Enthuse, liaise

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CLASSIFICATION OF STRUCTURE IN

ENGLISH SENTENCES

KIND DEFINITION EXAMPLES

Structure of

Predication

A structure that is

composed of a subject (S)and a predicate (P)

An academic year usually

starts in June. A fiscal yearalways begins on January 1.

Structure of

Modification

A structure that is

composed of aheadword/word modified

(H) and a modifier (M)

Maytime festivals

Festivals during Maytime.

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ENGLISH SENTENCES


S

U

B

T

Y

P

E

Structure of Pre-

modification

Structure of post-

modification

A modification

structure in which the

modifier comes

before the headword

A structure in which

the modifier comes

after the headword

Passing marks

successful people

Marks w/h are passing,

people who are

successful

Structure of

Complementation

A structure that is

composed of a

verb/verbal (V) and a

complement (COMP)

To hold the natives

captive comprise the

atmosphere examined

the specimen in the

vial experimenting on

the guinea pigs.

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ENGLISH SENTENCES


Structure of

Coordination

A structure that is

composed of two or more

independent units (IU) and

a coordinator (CO)

Solids, liquids, and gases

(coordination of words)

biodegradable materials or

nonbiodegradable wastes(coordination of phrases)

Scientist discover new

things; moreover, they invent

new devices. (ccordination of

clauses)

Structure of

Subordination

A structure that is

composed of a dependent

unit (DU) and a

subordinator (SUB)

On land due to the cold

climate because he was

bitten by a venomous snake

after they landed on the

moon.

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PROPERTIES of TECHNICAL

WRITING

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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL

WRITING

• ACCURACY – An effective technical paper isaccurate.

• An accurate work is devoid of errors. Itsevery word is precise.

• Care must be exercised in the selection ofwords to be used in the paper.

• Moreover, editing or revising is required to

ensure that the errors are corrected becauseerrors are eyesores.

• A paper replete with errors is not attractive.

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WRITING

• BREVITY – An effective paper is brief orshort.

• Technical men, for example, businessmenand scientists, are busy people.

• They don’t have the time to read long papers.

• The shorter the paper, the sacrificed for thesake of brevity.

• To make a paper brief, the writer needs toprune out deadwood, redundancies, andother unnecessary words or phrases.

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WRITING

• COHERENCE – An effective paper is coherent.

• Coherence refers to the sticking together of ideas.

• An effective writer has a way of putting ideas

together to form a coherent whole.• He achieves this by using transitional or pivotal

words properly, avoiding dangling and squinting

modifiers and constructing coordination and

subordination structures correctly.• In short, proper collocation or putting side by side of

words that should be placed together, for example,

modifiers and headwords are needed.

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WRITING

• DIRECTNESS – An effective paper is directto the point.

• A technical writer has to refrain from going

around the bush or the so-called roundaboutconstruction.

• He also avoids long-winded introductions. Inwriting paragraphs, he normally begins with a

topic sentence, develops the main idea withsupporting sentences, and ends with aconcluding sentence.

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WRITING

• EMPHASIS – An effective technical paper isemphatic.

• To emphasize is to highlight main ideas anddownplay subordinate ones.

• To achieve emphasis, an effective writer makesuse of parallelism, position, proportion,repetition, variation, conciseness and othermeans.

• An idea that is emphasized is written eitherinitially or finally, repeatedly, differently orsimilarly with other structures, concisely orproportionately longer that the other ideas.

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WRITING

• FACTUALITY - An effective technical

paper is factual.

• The information that it contains is based

on facts; therefore, it is provable, testable,

and credible.

• It is not a product of man’s imagination,

speculation, or hallucination

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WRITING

• GRAMMATICALITY – An effective

technical paper is grammatical.

• It does not violate grammatical rules oragreement between subject and verb,

between pronoun and antecedent, correct

forms of verbs and other grammaticalunits, syntax rules and the like adheres to

gramaticality.

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WRITING

• HEAVINESS – An effective technical

paper is heavy.

• Inasmuch as the subject matter of atechnical paper is serious, that is, a

scientific subject or technical topic

associated with the sciences, technicalwriting manifests heaviness.

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WRITING

• INTELLIGIBILITY – An effective technical paper isintelligible.

• Even if a technical paper contains technical orscientific terms, it must still be easily understood.

• An effective writer must have a way of makingdifficult terms easy on the part of the reader. He hasto provide pictures, drawings, charts, tables, andother graphic aids to promote reading

comprehension.• While he uses high-falutin words or jargon, he keeps

in mind that the reader’s understanding of thewritten material is of utmost importance.

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WRITING

• JUDICIOUNESS – An effective technical paper is

written judiciously in all stages of writing (pre-writing,

writing, and post writing) and in all aspects of

technical writing (syntax, diction, organization, etc.).

• A judicious writer always exercises good judgment.

• His ability to discriminate between fact and opinion,

between truth and falsity, between materiality and

immateriality, between goodness and badness,between ethicality and unethicality, is always put to

a test.

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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL WRITING

KEENNESS – An effective technical paper is

marked by keenness or sharpness. It is aproduct of a smart writer who makes use of his

intelligence to satisfy his readers.

LOGICALITY – An effective technical paper islogical. It conforms with the principles of logic,

the science of correct thinking and reasoning. It

does not take a logician to show correct spatial,

temporal, causal, genus-species, and otherrelationships of words and ideas. Effective

technical writing is a product of rational thinking

and sound reasoning.

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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL WRITING

MECHANICAL CORRECTNESS – An effective

technical paper is mechanically correct. Itconforms with the various rules of mechanics.

Mechanics involves the use of punctuation

marks, spelling, spacing, indention,

capitalization, italicization, margining, alignment,the use of numbers in figures and words, and

the like. Misspellings, fused sentences, comma

splices, and faulty punctuation are only some of

the mechanical errors. To correct these errors, atechnical writer must have an ample knowledge

of mechanical rules. A mechanically correct

work is not only presentable, but also reliable.

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WRITING

NEUTRALITY – An effective technical paper

is neutral. It is not biased, it does not favor

only one side. It is not partial; it takes into

account all aspects or facets of the thing

under consideration. It is not prejudiced, it

does not discriminate against any person,

group, or race. Even if it is persuasive, itstill displays a tinge of neutrality.

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WRITING

ORDER – An effective technical paper is written in

an orderly manner. The ideas are sequenced in

such a way that they flow smoothly. An effective

technical writer makes use of an outline toorganize his thoughts properly. He does not

immediately plunge into writing or rough-drafting

without having done pre-writing activities such

as brain-storming and clustering of ideas.Moreover, he employs proper formatting and

layouting of all materials, textual, and otherwise,

forming part of his paper.

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WRITING

PERSONALITY – An effective technicalpaper manifests the writer’s personality. It

is a reflection of the kind of person the

writer is. A well-written work is an index ofa writer who is careful and responsible.

However, a work with many grammatical

errors, slips in thought, and inappropriatewords, is an indication of a writer who

does not exercise care in his work and

lacks a sense of responsibility.

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WRITING

QUALITY - An effective technical paper is a

“quality” paper. A paper which lives up to

standards and possesses only all thepositive traits any technical writing must

have, is a paper of good quality. It has

substance and does not violate writing

principles or rules. Furthermore, it serves

its purpose and satisfies its readers.

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WRITING

READER-FRIENDLINESS – An effective

technical paper is reader-friendly. It is

adapted to the reader’s needs, interests

and knowledge. An effective technical

writer knows his readers and makes his

writing fit them. He produces the right

effect because he considers his readersand knows how to make them respond to

his writings.

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WRITING

SPECIFICITY – An effective technical paper

is specific, Unlike literary writing, technical

writing is written by a specific writer to For

instance, a sales letter is written by a sales

manager to a prospective buyer or buyers

for the purpose of promoting the product of

the company and boosting its sales.Moreover, words used are specific that the

reader/s can readily visualize the message

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WRITING

• THOROUGHNESS – An effective technical paper is

thorough, it is a complete work, be it a letter, book,

report, journal, article, or another form.

• It must be thoroughly done; it must not miss out

anything that is essential or salient to its being.

• An effective writer provides all the important data or

whatever the reader needs.

• Unlike a narrative whose conclusion is left to thereader, a technical paper always has an introduction

(preview or overview), a body (view), and a

conclusion (review)

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WRITING

UNITY – An effective technical paper is

unified. Unity means consistency in

purpose, idea, subject, voice, mood,number, person, gender, language, etc., A

violation of these produces a disunified

paper.

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WRITING

• VERACITY – An effective technical paper isveracious.

• It contains no lies and presents information

coming form reliable sources.• An honest writer does not plagiarize.

• When he borrows the words and ideas ofother people, he gives credit to them by

means of parenthetical citations and footnoteand bibliography entries.

• His work is properly documented.

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WRITING

WORTH – An effectivetechnical paper has worth. It

is valuable to its readersbecause it satisfies thereader’s need forinformation.


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WRITING• Besides, it serves other purposes. For

example, a contract renders the agreementbetween or among parties binding or aninstructional manual helps the reader use the

equipment optimally.• Business letters promote the firm’s

financial standing, while research papers tendto improve life.

• Indeed, technical papers have intellectualvalue because of their informativeness; they havesocial, economic, and similar values, too.

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X-FACTOR

• An effective technical paper has an X-

factor.

• X-factor stands for an unknown factor, that

factor which makes a paper unique, or

distinct from other papers to the extent

that it stands out.

• This distinctive trait allows for easy recallof the paper.

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YUPPINESS

• An effective technical paper is yuppy.

• The term yuppy came from the acronym

YUP which stands for “young urban

professional.”

• Posseses the qualities of a young urban

professional.

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Zeal

• Effective paper has a zeal.

• Eager desire or enthusiastic diligence.

Documents

EN 9 LESSON 1