1 The Field of Technical Writing Different forms of writing have been used to relay information since ancient times. People have communicated facts, lore, data, news, science, wisdom, and entertainment in writing using meth- ods ranging from ancient cave drawings and hieroglyphics to the latest bestseller, computer manual, or blog. Writing can be broadly classified into two categories: fiction and nonfiction. The novelists, short-story writers, poets, screenwriters, and playwrights who produce fiction manipulate words and lan- guage to create scenes, moods, and effects so readers can feel as though they are unobserved, passive participants to the events described. Nonfiction writers present facts and data in a variety of formats, including magazine and newspaper articles, books (text- books, biographies, how-tos, self-help, travel guides, and more), booklets, reports, brochures, memoirs, manuals, journals, newslet- 1 Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click here for terms of use. ters, advertising copy, and even the text inside the pages of the phone book. What Is Technical Writing? Technical writers write, edit, and prepare publications in many fields of technology, science, engineering, and medicine, including articles for technical and scientific journals, both in print and online. The publications may be technical reports, instruction man- uals, articles, papers, proposals, brochures, and booklets and even speeches for technical meetings and conferences. Technical writers must remain objective and factual about the subject matter they are dealing with. Their sole function is to write dispassionately about facts and objects and to relate useful, relevant, reliable information that readers can understand. The language they use must be simple and direct and contain a minimum of non- functional descriptive adjectives. Their verbs must be in the active rather than the passive voice to eliminate any doubt about what the writing means or implies. Any writing that requires familiarity with (or willingness to learn about) a technical field would be considered technical writing. Writing about museum conservation is technical writing as much as writing user manuals for a software product or a troubleshoot- ing guide for a broken tractor. Technical writing is a useful com- munication tool whenever information of a technical nature must be transmitted. Need for Technical Writers The twentieth century saw a sharp rise in the amount of nonfic- tion material produced, largely because of the nearly continuous 2 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers advances and developments in technology, which shows no signs of slowing down. Thanks to this rapid and abundant increase, there is a growing demand for technical writers. In the early days of technical writing, people with scientific and technical backgrounds were given writing assignments for which they weren’t prepared or qualified. Not surprisingly, much of the writing they produced was often very poorly composed, stilted, and boring. This in no way reflects on the intelligence or education level of the writers, but represents the difficulty of merging technical knowledge with writing skills to produce an acceptable product. It is not unusual for highly educated technicians to produce poor- quality writing because their training and experience have not focused on verbal and written skills. On the other hand, writers with no scientific background had difficulty understanding how to present and interpret scientific data and subject matter so that the reader would be properly informed. The need for technical writers arose because these situations almost always guaranteed poor results. Managers were often less concerned with the quality of the writing than with simply having the work done. Sometimes the writing was so poor that readers failed to derive any usable information from it. For example, if the assignment was a construction manual for a process or a use man- ual for a piece of equipment, the results could be disastrous and detrimental to business. Sharing Your Knowledge Technical writers have another important function: to teach others about their profession. One technical writing graduate who works for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has led instruc- tional seminars in technical writing for her colleagues. The Field of Technical Writing 3 This writer has the potential to go far because she has jumped into a new area and demonstrated her ability to explain, describe, and illustrate. These characteristics will help her immeasurably in preparing training programs. Making a Name for Yourself Will you become famous as a technical writer? It’s highly unlikely. In fact, technical writers are often, by necessity, anonymous authors who don’t get to see their byline attached to their work. (The excep- tions to this rule of anonymity are people who write scientific or technical articles for newspapers, magazines, and scholarly publi- cations under their own names or who write popular how-to guides.) If you’re wondering why most technical writers don’t have a byline, think about the last time you tried to assemble a new bar- becue grill or program a home entertainment system. Even the most effectively written instruction manual may leave some users frus- trated, wishing they could lodge a complaint directly with the per- son who wrote the instruction manual. That’s reason enough for the writer’s anonymity! But that aside, most employers who produce technical material want to reach their audience with concise and easy-to-understand language and to promote their product or train their audience in its use. No writing stars are required or encouraged. With that said, you can still build a name for yourself through your list of credits. Every assignment you complete becomes another item to add to your résumé, and in some cases you might even be able to keep a sample of your work and create a professional portfolio to show to new clients. Word of mouth and employer and 4 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers client references and recommendations also will help you to become known in your area of specialization. Job Titles Although the term technical writer is the most common job title used, there are other titles as well as ranks. Assistant technical writer Associate technical writer Consulting technical writer Copyeditor Copywriter Corporate technical writer Course developer Curriculum designer Curriculum planner Documentation contractor Documentation specialist Education specialist Information systems writer Instructional designer Junior technical writer Knowledge analyst Lead technical writer Senior technical writer Software technical writer Technical communicator Technical editor Technical intern The Field of Technical Writing 5 Technical translator Tr a iner Areas of Specialization The areas in which a technical writer can work are vast and varied, but most specialize in just one, sometimes two, areas. For example, a medical writer wouldn’t be expected to be knowledgeable about software or the environment, just as an advertising writer wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with agriculture. This list of fields that need technical writers is just a guide. Your own research will no doubt help you add to it. Advertising Agriculture Architecture Armed forces Computer system documentation Corporate communications Education Electronics Engineering Entertainment Environment Film and documentaries Finance and banking Government Graphics design Information development Instructional design 6 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers Insurance Investments Journalism Manual writing Manufacturing Market research Mechanics Medicine Multimedia specialist Pharmaceuticals Proposal writing Public relations Publication management and design Publicity Research firms Sales Science Telecommunications Video production Web page authoring and site design The different specializations and the type of writing that tech- nical writers do in various areas will be covered in greater depth in Chapter 4. Disastrous Effects of Bad Technical Writing Technical writing should never confuse the reader. The example that follows is a piece of writing that proved to be dangerously inef- fective. (This letter is part of the public record.) The Field of Technical Writing 7 Babcock & Wilcox Company IR Generation Group TO: Manager, Plant Integration, Three Mile Island FROM: Manager, Plan Performance Services, Babcock & Wilcox Subject: Operator Interruption of High Pressure Injection (HPI) References: Two titles listed References 1 and 2 (attached) recommend a change in Babcock and Wilcox’s philoso- phy for HPI system use during low-pressure transits. Basically they recommend leav- ing the HPI pumps on, once HPI has been indicated, until it can be determined that the hot leg temperature is more than 50°F below Tsat for the reactor cooling system (RCS) pressure. Nuclear Service believes that this mode can cause the RCS (including the pressurizer) to be solid. The pressure reliefs will lift, with a water surge through the discharge piping into the quench tank. We believe the following incidents should be evaluated: 1. If the pressurizer goes solid with one or more HPI pumps continuing to operate, would there be a pressure spike before the relief valves open, which could cause dam- age to the RCS? 2. What damage would the water surge through the relief valve discharge piping and quench tank cause? To date, the Nuclear Service has not notified our operating plants to change HPI policy consistent with References 1 and 2 because of the above-stated questions. Yet the ref- erences suggest the possibility of uncovering the core if present HPI policy is contin- ued. We request that Integration resolve the issue of how the HPI system should be used. We are available to help as needed. Signature 8 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers Did you actually read all that? Probably not—and neither did the plant manager at Three Mile Island. Babcock & Wilcox Com- pany’s intention for the above letter was to warn Three Mile Island managers that they could uncover the reactor’s core (and thus pos- sibly have a nuclear meltdown) if certain operating procedures were not changed. As you may recall, a nuclear meltdown is exactly what happened. How would you revise that letter? Examples of Good Technical Writing Advances in technology and science are leading to more variety in technical writing. As new terminology, theories, instruments, pro- cesses, and machinery are developed, others are discarded—an ongoing process that makes relatively new equipment and proce- dures obsolete almost before the packing crates are opened. Scien- tists in every field are constantly striving to make new discoveries, which means that technical writers must replace old paragraphs with new ones at a feverish pace. Several examples of scientific writ- ing are cited below. Example One The velvet background on a painting of Elvis looks black because it reflects so little light. But getting a surface to reflect no light at all is surprisingly difficult. Now researchers have created a virtu- ally reflection-free surface by coating it with filaments only a few billionths of a meter thick. Improved antireflective surfaces might have many uses. For example, they could eliminate light-wasting reflections in fiber- optic telecommunications, or the surfaces could brighten low- power light-emitting diode (LED) lamps. The Field of Technical Writing 9 Applied to a clear surface, the coating would make a lens absorb more light, increasing its transparency. On an opaque sur- face, the filaments would make a silicon solar cell, for example, almost perfectly absorbing. . . . Light rebounds when it strikes the boundary between two materials that have different “refractive indices”—measures of how fast light travels through the substances. For example, sun- light bounces off the surface of a pond because light travels more slowly in water than in air. The greater the difference between the refractive indices of any two materials, the more light is reflected. 1 Example one is the beginning of an article that appeared in Sci- ence News and was written by a professional science journalist. Sci- ence News is a weekly periodical as well as online newsmagazine published by the Society for Science and the Public, which was founded in 1921. It covers the latest developments in medicine, pharmacology, and the natural sciences. The articles vary in length, ranging from a single paragraph to several pages. The subscribers are primarily scientists who want a quick overview of what is occur- ring in other sciences. However, many nonscientists are also regu- lar readers because the articles are well written and understandable to the lay reader. Subscribers also include professional and educa- tional institutions. Example Two In a development that promises to ease structural analysis of pro- teins, British researchers have found a way to determine protein structures by using only basic and easy-to-obtain data comple- mented by theoretical calculations. 10 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers _______ 1. Barry, Patrick L. “The New Black: A Nanoscale Coating Reflects Almost No Light.” Science News 171(9), 3/3/07, p.132. . documentaries Finance and banking Government Graphics design Information development Instructional design 6 Opportunities in Technical Writing Careers Insurance Investments. willingness to learn about) a technical field would be considered technical writing. Writing about museum conservation is technical writing as much as writing