Chapter 3 and 4 Summary

Before writing any technical document, it is important first to know what information conveyed
to the audience and to know for what type of audience. These should be the goals in mind before
starting to write any technical document, or else the information sent will not be clear to the
audience. The information must be clear, adequate and eliminate any unwanted content.
Whatever a document is written, there is an expectation of a result from the audience. From the
audience to get this result, there must be a clear connection between the source and the
destination, in this case, the person who is writing and the target audience. It is an important
aspect to know the specification of the document before starting to write the document.
Specification helps to limit the number of words used and the graphs and statistics used to
represent vital information. While writing, it is important to choose plain words rather than using
complex words. The English language has two distinct voices: active and passive voices. There
must be an efficient use of active and passive voices. For example, we cannot use passive voice
in writing instructions or procedures.
In a company working as an engineer, it is critical to know the modes of communication used to
communicate to a different person in the hierarchy of an organization. There are many forms we
can use to communicate to various individuals in the organization. For example: if an employee
wants to speak to a person in the same building of an organization, then it is suggested to go
down his hall and talk to him. Or if the employee wants to speak to some person who is in the
other building of the organization, it is suggested to write an e-mail or send memo to that person
Using the internet as a mode of communication is quite common because of the growing
technology changes in the past centuries. Email communication also has some disadvantages, for
example, if the recipient does not receive the email because of server maintenance or other
issues, and there is no record if the recipient receives some information sent by the sender, but
the recipient would have deleted the mail.
Use of telephone is another mode of communication, where information conveyed through
telephone or mobile phones, but the limitation is that there is no permanent record of the
communicated information. The writing style regardless of using email or writing business letter
is all the same. It must have the topic that should mentioned for writing. First, the overview of
the content is written in the email, and it is not ideal to have long and lengthy paragraph
information in the mail. The paragraphs should be kept short and compact, and the written
content should be up to a point.