Technical Writing

Technical writing the process of writing and sharing technical information in a professional manner. The
essence of all technical writing is HOW. At a simple level, you can take the examples of a cookbook full
of recipes or an instruction manual on how to operate a mobile as technical writing. A good part of
technical writing is not meant for general public. This includes business writing to communicate with
management, employees and other businesses and is full of jargons related to the world of business.

In a wider sense, textbooks of science subjects are also examples of technical writing. If you are a
student of photography, any book containing information that is valuable to you is a form of technical
writing as it contains words that common public may not understand or appreciate.

Whether intended for general audience or for specific readers, technical writing should be clear and
concise. It should be helpful for the readers it is intended for. Although technical writing is certainly
different from writing a story or a poem, any technical writing must have content presented in as such a
manner that it has the ability to engage the reader. It should have material arranged in a manner that
the reader gets the information that he is seeking and also understands the subject matter easily.

Technical writing is a type of writing where the author is writing about a particular subject that requires
direction, instruction, or explanation. This style of writing has a very different purpose and different
characteristics than other writing styles such as creative writing, academic writing or business writing.

The understanding of written text depends on two distinct components:

1. Readability

2. Comprehensibility

Second component is essential to ensure that our reader will understand the purpose of our writing.
These two components will be discussed in separate sections, even though some of the issues raised
may be pertinent to both. In addition, we will also look at issues of style — some of writing’s do’s and
don’ts, as even the prose of technical writing does not have to be equivalent to a blunt axe when it
might be an instrument of precision

The concepts of readability and comprehensibility imply that the act of reading beyond the physical act
of seeing and deciphering characters and chunks of text is vastly more complex.

Thus, our writing will need to meet a number of requirements to successfully pass this stage:

1. The sentences must be well formed syntactically

2. The sentences must not exceed a certain length

3. The sentences should not be below a minimum length

4. The choice of words.

TECHNICAL WRITING

- Factual
- Informative, Instructional or persuasive
- Clear, Precise and Straightforward
- Objective
- Specialized Vocabulary

CREATIVE WRITING

- Fictional and Imaginative

- Entertaining, provocative and captivating
- Artistic, figurative, symbolic or even vague
- Subjective
- Generalized vocabulary

Examples of Technical Writing

- Action Plans
- Advertisement
- Agenda
- Audit Report
- Book Review
- Brochure
- Budget
- Business plan
- Catalog
- Contract
- Critique
- Data book or display
- Description
- Diagram, chart or Graph
- Editorial
- Email
- Feasibility Report
- Field Test Report
- Incident Report
- Informational Form
- Informational Poster
- Informative summary
- Instructions
- Interview questions
- Literary
Technical Writing VS. Creative Writing

Point of Comparison Technical Writing Creative Writing

Subject Scientific / Technical Generally about life
Readership Specific General
Format Formal Informal
Language Literal / direct / denotative Figurative / Indirect /
connotative
Style Impersonal / simple Personal / Elaborated
Tone Serious / unemotional Light / Conversational
Content Objective / Neutral Subjective / Opinionated
Purpose Informative / Instructional Informative / Entertaining