Technical Writing - Module 2 Clear Communication

What's included in Style

*Choosing words *Using patterns of words and sentences to express ideas clearly *Selection and arranging words in clear patterns to communicate meaning to a defined audience *Creating an appropriate tone for the writing situation While speaking you have different ways to communicate the meaning clear and establish a rapport with audience; voice body language, pitch, facial expressions and simple reiteration or explanation to the questions. While in writing you have a single change to explain ideas and establish a tone

Tone Informal and Formal

Informal language creates a more personal tone, includes slangs, colloquialisms, and regional dialects, sentence fragments, contractions and personal pronouns, casual spoken language Formal language creates a distant one. uses multisyllable words, complex sentence structure, and stylistic techniques such as complex or extended figures of speech

Jargon and Gobbledygook

Jargon is the specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, class, or group. This is only appropriate for an audience that understand that terminology Gobbledygook is a jargon enmeshed in abstract pseudotechnical or pseudoscientific

Strategies for simplicity

Many sentences contain complete ideas yet are ineffective because they lack conciseness. focus on key ideas by combining sentence parts or entire sentence

Sexist Language

Offensive to many people. use of words that arbitrarily assign roles or characteristics to people on the basis of gender

Specific and general words

Specific words identify particular person, object, place, quality, concept or occurrence General words identifies a group or class.

Chapter 2 Introduction

Technical communicators must write with an understanding of their audience and the audience's needs. Clear written language is a basic tool for technical communicators.

Tones, tact, and Bias

Tones, tact and Bias - play major role in effective communication. Tone - indicates your attitude as a writer toward the subject and the audience.

purpose

What do you want the readers to know, believe or do when they read the document

Omitting Nonessential words

Wordiness results when padded phrases (meaningless words) redundancy (unnecessary repetition) and affectation (inflated language that sounds more important than it is) A common problem with wordiness occurs with the use of expletives such as (it or there) to begin a sentence

conciseness

concise writing is free of unnecessary words, phrases, clauses, and sentences without sacrificing clarity or appropiate details. It is not a synonym of brevity; a long report may be concise, while it's abstract may be brief and concise. It can be used depending on the writer's purpose

persuasion

convince the audience to adopt the writer's point of view or take particular action

Clarity

essential to effective communication with your readers, you cannot achieve your purpose or goal like persuasion without clarity

Workplace Style

expository, providing and perhaps explaining information. it requires utilitarian language with emphasis of exactness 0 information must be accurately, completely, responsibly and clearly. Also is making sure to select the appropriate choices for the different audiences and backgrounds Avoid inappropriate jargon, sexist language, convey information with an appropiate tone with tactfulness and without bias

cliches

expressions that have been used for so long they are no longer fresh but come to mind easily because they are so familiar (i.e. the game plan/ use instead strategy, schedule)

emphasis

in writing means highlighting the facts and ideas you consider important and subordinating those of secondary importance Reach emphasis by: position, climactic order, sentence length, sentence type, active voice, repetition, intensifiers, direct statements, long dashes, typographical devices.

Subordination

is the use of sentence structure to show the appropiate relationship between ideas of unequal importance

Style

is the way you write, craft language to serve the needs of readers.

circumlocution

long, indirect way of expressing things - leading cause of wordiness

Bias

preferences for some ideas or courses of actions over others. in some cases your opinion is expected; in others, you feel you must speak because some recognize the violation of ethics. Keep opinions to yourself. Be fair in the presentation of information, careful not to mislead readers through your biases and preferences. you need to be ethical

Achieving clarity

proper emphasis and subordination are mandatory

Biased Language

refers to words and expressions that offend because they make inappropriate assumptions or stereotypes about gender, ethnicity, physical or mental disability, age, or sexual orientation. Even if used unintentionally, biased language can damage your credibility - simply don't mention differences among people unless they are relevant to the discussion

Writing situation

subject, purpose and audience determines the tone

Tactfulness

treating readers with respect, being concerned about and considerate of the readers' feelings. It is exercising good manners.

Effective Sentence Patterns

use concise, simple and clear style

ambiguity

word or passage is ambiguous when it can be interpreted in two or more ways - providing the reader no certain basis for choosing among the alternatives. Incomplete comparison and missing or misplaced modifiers cause ambiguity. Imprecise word choice including faulty idioms can cause ambiguity

STrategies for Conciseness

Clarity is essential and conciseness is the key element (saying much in few words) avoid short, choppy sentences and telegraphic style. do not remove function words, omitting these function words causes difficulties reading and results in ambiguous meaning articles (a, an, the) prepositions (by, at, in, to) relative pronouns (which, that) Linking verbs (feels, is)

Concrete or abstract words

Concrete words are those that can be perceived by the senses Abstract words are those that cannot be perceived by the senses. (i.e. scheduling, production, control, courage)

Denotation and connotation

Denotative meaning of a word is literal and objective Connotation refers to attitudes and ideas implied by words because of certain associations. Use the dictionary for a usage note These words in technical writing calls for exactness and objectivity.