TECHNICAL Lecture# 2

WRITING & Ms. Rabia Shaukat

PRESENTATION E-mail: hayat.ujala@gmail.com

SKILLS
Previous Lecture

❑ Discussions
❑ Introduction to Technical Writing
❑ Origin of Technical Writing
❑ Purpose of Technical Writing
❑ Examples of Different types of Technical Writing

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Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

Why are you writing

Information Persuasion Audience

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Understanding Audience

❑ Education
❑ Subject Knowledge
❑ Relationship with Audience

4
Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

How to enhance the probability of

comprehension for the audience?
❑ Clarity Easily understood by your intended audience

Clear and crisp

❑ Conciseness
All of the necessary information is present
❑ Accessible Document Design (necessary info)
Audience is specified
❑ Audience Recognition (specified)
Grammatical correct and accurate
❑ Accuracy (grammar)

5
Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

How to enhance the probability of

comprehension for the audience?
❑Clarity
❑ Conciseness
❑ Accessible Document Design (necessary info)
❑ Audience Recognition (specified)
❑ Accuracy (grammar)

6
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

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Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Ambiguous: “Our patients enjoy the warm days while they last.”
• Clear: “While the warm days last, our patients enjoy them.”

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Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Ambiguous: “Our patients enjoy the warm days while they last.”
• Clear: “While the warm days last, our patients enjoy them.”

9
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice [1/2]
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Passive Voice: “An inaccurate report about the university’s plans,

presented by John, appeared in the media.”
• Active Voice: “John gave an inaccurate report about the university’s
plans to the media.” 10
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice [1/2]
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Passive Voice: “An inaccurate report about the university’s plans,

presented by John, appeared in the media.”
• Active Voice: “John gave an inaccurate report about the university’s
plans to the media.” 11
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice [2/2]
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Passive Verbs: “The experiment was conducted so that the

relationship between the two theories could be examined.”
• Active Verbs: “The experiment examined the relationship between
the two theories.” 12
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice [2/2]
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Passive Verbs: “The experiment was conducted so that the

relationship between the two theories could be examined.”
• Active Verbs: “The experiment examined the relationship between
the two theories.” 13
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Don’t Write: “In my opinion, you can easily forget how different life
was 50 years ago.”
• Write: “It is easy to forget how difficult life was 50 years ago.”
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Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Don’t Write: “In my opinion, you can easily forget how different life
was 50 years ago.”
• Write: “It is easy to forget how difficult life was 50 years ago.”
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Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words
To combine thoughts between sentences for making the
flow smoother and the switching of idea less abrupt.
● However ● Nevertheless
● Therefore ● Likewise
● Although ● Alternatively
● Furthermore ● Consequently 16
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Wrong: “Student should be on time and they should be prepared as

well.”
• Correct: “Students should be on time. Furthermore, they must be
prepared. ” 17
Clarity

❑ Avoid ambiguity
❑ Prefer the active voice
❑ Exclude personal introduction and conclusion
❑ Use transition words

• Wrong: “Student should be on time and they should be prepared as

well.”
• Correct: “Students should be on time. Furthermore, they must be
prepared. ” 18
Sample: This flawed memo, written by a
manager to a newly hired employee,
highlights the importance of clarity…

Reference
19
Check List

• Who is the audience? Who will know what? Will the audience know a great deal
(High Tech)? Will the audience know a little about the topic (Low Tech)? Will the
audience know nothing about the topic (Lay)?

• What do you plan to do? What do you want the audience to do? What do you want
to know?

• When should the job be completed? What’s the turnaround time? What’s the
timetable? What’s the desired schedule? When do you need an answer?

• Where will the work take place?

• Why is the task being undertaken (the rationale, motivation, goal)? Why is the
desired date important?

• How should the task be performed? What’s the preferred procedure?

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Stop and Think!!!

• Using the checklist as pre-writing tool, revise the

previous memo to achieve improved clarity.

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 22
Suggested Solution
Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

How to enhance the probability of

comprehension for the audience?
❑Clarity
❑ Conciseness
❑ Accessible Document Design (necessary info)
❑ Audience Recognition (specified)
❑ Accuracy (grammar)

23
Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

How to enhance the probability of

comprehension for the audience?
❑ Clarity

❑Conciseness
❑ Accessible Document Design (necessary info)
❑ Audience Recognition (specified)
❑ Accuracy (grammar)

24
Conciseness

❑ Write positively
❑ Paragraph often
❑ Use reasonable sentence length
❑ Delete meaningless words
❑ Delete doubled words
❑ Delete redundant categories
❑ Reduce phrases to words

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Conciseness

❑ Write positively
• It usually takes more words to convey the same idea in a
negative form than in a positive form.

❑ Paragraph often
• Paragraph often to break up complex text.
• A good thumb rule is 60-100 words for an average paragraph.

26
Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Keep sentences short so that readers don’t have to remember
too much information to understand the sentence.
• Most sentences average 20 words.
• If a sentence is exceeding 40 words, try to find a way to break it
up into smaller sentences.

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Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Wrong: “In order to successfully accomplish their job functions, the

team has been needing more work space for sometime now.”
• Correct: “The team needs more work space to do its jobs.”

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Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Wrong: “In order to successfully accomplish their job functions, the

team has been needing more work space for sometime now.”
• Correct: “The team needs more work space to do its jobs.”

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Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• You can shorten sentence by avoiding
• Redundancy
• Prepositional phrases
• Passive voice

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Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Avoiding redundancies: some scenarios

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Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Avoiding prepositional phrases: some scenarios

32
Conciseness

❑ Use reasonable sentence length

• Avoiding passive voice: some scenarios

33
Conciseness

❑ Delete meaningless words

• Avoid words that do not add any meaning to a sentence
• Basically
• Generally
• Kind of
• Actually

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Conciseness

❑ Delete meaningless words

• Wrong: “The picture was kind of blurry.”

• Correct: “The picture was blurry.”

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Conciseness

❑ Delete meaningless words

• Wrong: “The picture was kind of blurry.”

• Correct: “The picture was blurry.”

36
Conciseness

❑ Delete doubled words

• Do not use word pairs that mean the same thing

● Goals and objectives ● Each and every

● First and foremost ● Fully and completely

● Basic and fundamental ● One and the same

● Hopes and desires ● Ways and means

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Conciseness

❑ Deleting redundant categories

● Round in shape ● Sour in taste

● Large in size ● Shiny in appearance
● Blue in color ● Smooth in texture
● Heavy in weight ● Honest in character

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Conciseness

❑ Reduce phrases to words

• Many phrases can be expressed in fewer words or even in a
single word.
• For this reason ➔ so
• Due to the fact that ➔ because
• At a much greater rate than ➔ faster
• Despite the fact that ➔ although
• A great deal of ➔ much

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Objectives/Traits in Technical Writing

How to enhance the probability of

comprehension for the audience?
❑Clarity
❑Conciseness
❑ Accessible Document Design (necessary info)
❑ Audience Recognition (specified)
❑ Accuracy (grammar)
40
Conclusions

• Traits in technical writing

• Clarity
• Conciseness

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