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What is Technical Writing?

© 2015 Karen L. Thompson Department of English University of Idaho

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At the University of Idaho

• Students majoring in English can choose from several Program emphases. One of these is the Professional Writing Emphasis.

• We also offer a minor in Professional Writing through the English department open to all majors.

• English 313: Business Writing is one of our 300-level course offerings in Professional Writing.

• Each course uses a broad definition of Professional Writing as well as a narrower definition specific to that course.

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Broad Definition ofProfessional Writing

• The scope of professional writing covers any written or oral communication—other than that produced or circulated as art.

• It increasingly includes multimedia products such as podcasts, screencasts, slidecasts etc.

• These products whether written or oral are created for a variety of purposes both internal and external to businesses and organizations.

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Examples of Professional Writing– academic writing essays, project reports, journal

articles, grants to conduct research, oral presentations,

– corporate, government, and organizational internal and external communication such as letters, written and audio reports, emails, proposals, forms, oral presentations,

– representative texts, such as codes of ethics and service charters; corporate and government newsletters; and public notices and leaflets..and more……

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Our other 300-Level Professional Writing Courses Offer a More Narrow Definition of Professional Writing

• English 316: Environmental Writing• English 317: Technical Writing• English 318: Science Writing

• The next slides will help you understand the differences in these courses.

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English 313:

Business Writing

• Emerged from the communication needs of commerce, so it has a focus on interpersonal communication from both within and without a business or organization.

• English 313 emphasizes writing that fosters positive workplace relationships.

• Students who take this course tend to be business, finance, and accounting majors but it is open to and taken by many other majors.

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English 316:

Environmental Writing

• Emerged from the need to express our relationship to our environment and to understand how language shapes this relationship in terms of ourselves and others (public policy).

• Students who take this course tend to be majoring in environmental science, natural resources, and wildlife management but it is open to and taken by many other majors.

English 316 is offered through our Semester in the Wild

Program

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English 318:

Science Writing

• Emerged from the need to communicate the results of scientific research, so it has a focus of disseminating those results to both expert and lay audiences.

• Students who take this course may be majoring in biology, chemistry, food science, plant science, animal science, and geological science but it is open to and taken by many other majors.

• NOTE: this course is cross-listed with JAMM318 and we offer it in alternating semesters with them.

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English 317:

Technical Writing

• Emerged from the communication needs of inventing and using technology, so it has a user-centered design focus.

• This focus means you will be learning how to translate technically dense material for audiences with lower-levels of technical or scientific expertise.

• Students who take this course tend to be engineering, science, and technology majors but it is open to and taken by many other majors.

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These categories are not mutually exclusive.

Technical Writing

Science Writing

EnvironmentalWriting

Business Writing

• When a business writer analyzes data and presents it in a report, it is similar to scientific writing.

• When a science writer submits a request to purchase software, it is business writing.

• When a technical writer gives a presentation to a group of potential investors, it’s business writing.

• When an environmental scientist studies how audiences perceive messages about climate change, it is a form of technical writing (usability).

• Etc. etc. etc.

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Writing is a Problem-Solving Activity:

• The project deliverables in this course (and on the job) are important, but if you learn how to produce them as tasks, you will not learn how to write well because the solution to a problem in technical writing is never the only available one.

• Writers must constantly interpret writing situations and weigh possible responses to effectively meet these situations. That means the situations and products are dynamic, not static.

• Understanding how writing is a problem-solving activity will help you develop writing skills that transfer to new situations.

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Therefore, throughout the course you will• Study concepts that are transferable to many

different writing situations and apply these concepts to complete each project’s deliverable (i.e. end-product).

• Think of these transferable concepts as sets of writing skills you are placing in a toolkit that you can draw upon after you leave the course to make effective choices in any writing situation.

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Today

• Technology shapes not only how we write but what we write.

• Communicating in the workplace takes place across a wide variety of platforms in both oral and written forms and for audiences who are locally and globally culturally diverse.

• Successful workplace writers know how to analyze and navigate these complex writing situations by making effective rhetorical choices.

• And that’s why rhetoric is your new best friend.

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What is rhetoric?

The classical definition of rhetoric is the use of language to persuade.

Persuasion can be positive or negative, but in common usage, rhetoric has increasingly been defined negatively.

And, there’s a reason for that.

Plato and Aristotle from School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio (1509)

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Negative definition of rhetoric.

Because the art of persuasion can be used for --- let’s just say—not necessarily noble ends, the word rhetoric has a pejorative (negative) meaning.

This negative meaning is often associated with political rhetoric, where language is used to defeat another candidate throughdistortions, misinformation, or outright lies.

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Modern definitions of rhetoric.

A more modern definition of rhetoric acknowledges that it informs whatever we do with language.

It is how we use language to elicit any number of responses from diverse audiences and for a wide variety of purposes.

There’s just one more thing you need to know before starting the first project.

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I don’t really want to read that report from you.

Don’t take this wrong but no one in the workplace wants to read what you write.

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• Solve problems,• Gain a better understanding of something,• Make effective decisions,• Plan work they and others will do, and• Create a paper trail for • and legal purposes.

Workplace readers will NEED to read what you write to:

This helps me.What a great writer!