STAGES OF WRITING

1 WHY DO WE WRITE?
 To develop and express ideas.
 To provide evidence to support ideas.
 To dispute or support existing theories.
 To display knowledge.

2 THE STAGES OF WRITING A REPORT

1. Planning
2. Researching
3. Writing up
Before you start writing:
Have a good idea of who your audience is. What you want to communicate to them.
2.1 Planning
1. Topic
What is your topic?
Decide what your report is going to be about
2. Purpose
Focus on WHY you are writing:
■ Whether it’s a short memo or a long technical report, you should start with a firm
sense of PURPOSE/GOAL.
■ Why do I have to have a purpose?
– To present appropriate supporting data
– To test its adequacy
– To discard anything that is not needed
■ To determine your purpose, think of your audience:
– what you want your audience to do with your information
– and what they need from the document
What do you want to do?
3. Audience
Audience analysis is important.
Consider the audience’s abilities and expectations as you plan, research, write, and
revise.
Clear Goal clear, noise-free message
You write because you expect some kind of resulting action
To get results, bridge the gap between you and your target audience.
The gap is caused in

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 a. knowledge,
b. ability,
c. interest.

A lot of technical writing fails because writers make inaccurate assumptions regarding
the people who read their documents.

Engineers often write without taking adequate time to consider the nature, needs,
interests, levels of expertise, or possible reactions of those who must read their work.

Audience analysis is not just a question of being polite, thoughtful, or sensitive.

Ask yourself:

■ Knowledge:
– Are my readers engineers in my field of expertise who are seeking technical
information and will they be offended or bored by elementary details?
– Are they engineers from a different field who will need some general technical
background first?
– Are they managers or supervisors who may be less knowledgeable in my field
but who need to make executive decisions based on what I write?
– Are they technicians or others without my expertise and training but with a
strong practical knowledge of the field?
– Are they non-experts from marketing, sales, finance, or other fields who lack
engineering or technical backgrounds but who are interested in the subject for
non-engineering reasons?
– Are they a mixed audience, such as a panel or committee, made up of experts
and lay people?

■ Ability
– Am I communicating technical information on a level my audience can use?
– Am I using appropriate vocabulary, examples, definitions, and depth of
detail?
– Am I expecting more expertise, skill, or action from my audience than I can
reasonably expect?

■ Interest
– Why will my audience want to spend time reading this document?
– Does my document provide the right level of detail and technology to keep my
audience’s interest without losing them or boring them?
– What is their current attitude likely to be – positive, neutral, or negative?
– Will my document give them the information they want?

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 Answering these questions will increase your awareness of the multiple decisions and
choices to be made as you plan, write, or revise your document.
To deliver a clear message, you must first assess your audience.
Properly analyze technical knowledge, expectations, and attitude toward the subject,
so you can address them in your document.

4. Establish a focus
Get to the point in your title

General Specific

General: Employee Safety

Specific: Need for employees to wear hard hats and safety glasses

General: Emergency requisitions

Specific: Recommendations to change the procedures for making emergency
requisitions.

5. Check that sources are available/accessible

6. Make sure you know your material
7. Outline – organize your thoughts under headings
8. Plan the contents – what information are you going to put under each heading.
9. Budget your time to write, revise, and edit.

2.2 Researching
1. Search for relevant journals/books/information in the library and on the internet.
2. Write down the details of your sources; highlight/take notes of relevant information.
3. Do some reading.
4. Decide if you need to do more reading.
2.3 Writing Up
1. Write the first complete draft.
2. Read the first draft.
3. Edit the draft – decide objectively whether your ideas have been expressed clearly.
4. Arrange a tutorial with me.
5. Write the contents page, references, title page and abstract.

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3 TITLE: GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

What is the topic of the report?

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What is the purpose of the report?
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Write a specific title for the report.
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4 OUTLINE AND CONTENT

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