WMSU-ISMP-GU-001.

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Effective Date: 7-DEC-2016

Focus on Technical Writing

Lesson (2)

Introduction

Technical Writing is an act of communicating through writing, whatever you think and feel
about your job, business, industry, profession and organization. It is “on-the-job writing” – a modern
way of defining technical writing. Defining it traditionally, you think of technical writing as mainly
producing written outputs about these three (3) fields of knowledge: Science, Technology and
Engineering. As an act of writing about a workplace, it pertains to all kinds of organization, jobs, and
professions, in the field of Architecture, Agriculture, Business, Engineering, Music, Medicine, law,
Psychology, Radiology, Banking, and so on. Invoking varieties of people, products, services, topics
and expressions that are unique, special or exclusive to a particular job, this type of writing is apt to
use these two words – diversity and multiculturalism – to characterize its nature. (Pfeiffer, 2007)

Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. Define technical writing and its importance in the workplace;

2. Identify the characteristics of a technical writing; and
3. Compare and contrast technical writing to other types of writing.

Try this!

Read this sample technical written work.

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The active protection period is dependent upon environmental conditions. Anti-Rust Spray should be
regularly applied to complete protection in aggressive environments.

A. Reflection Time!
With your groupmates, discuss and answer this.

1. What is something unique or unusual about the technical written work you have
just read?
2. Is this reading material interesting or undertandle to all kinds of reader? Why?
Why not?

B. More of readings!

Read the sample writing excerpts below and answer (by partner) these questions about each
document:

 What is the subject?

 For whom was the document written?
 How is the document organized?
 How would you describe the writer’s style?
 What is the tone of the document?
 Does the document include any special features (for example, boldfacing, numbering,
bulleted lists, visual aids, headings or subheadings)?

Sample Technical Document excerpt

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Sample Research Paper excerpt

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Sample Personal Essay excerpt

Think ahead!

Concept Linker!

1. What immediately comes into your mind upon hearing the expression, technical writing?
2. Do you thing technical writing is quite different from other ways of writing, such as academic
writing, essay writing, poetry writing, news item writing and other ways of writing? Give
reasons for your answer.

Read and Ponder

A. Review the three (3) excerpts on More Readings. Have you written or read similar types of
documents? If so, why? What was the situation? Which of the documents would you use to
make a decision or to perform an action? Which type of document would you prefer to write?
Why?

B. For the complete lecture on Topic 2 (go to GC and download!)

1. Special Features of Technical Writing;

a. Ethical issues
b. Communication Dilemma
2. How technical writing compares to other writing?

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See if you can do this!

A. Drawing from the activities in this section, write your own definition of technical writing.
Make sure you incorporate concepts from this section, such as subject, organization,
audience, style, tone and special features. (see uploaded lecture)
B. From your experience with writing, what characteristics does good writing share? In other
words, how would you describe good writing?

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