Cankaya University

CANKAYA UNIVERSITY
-FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIT-

CHAPTER III
CANKAYA UNIVERSITY - OFFICE OF BASIC AND ELECTIVE COURSES- ENGLISH UNIT
PROCESS OF TECHNICAL WRITING
OUTLINE

1. Phase 1. Conducting A Situational
Analysis
2. Phase 2. Gathering Information
3. Phase 3. Planning & Arranging
4. Phase 4. Writing & Revising

Phase 1. Conducting A Situational Analysis

Audience: readers of your document: you must understand their
abilities, needs, characteristics, and expectations.

Role: perspective you take toward the information and the
audience.

Are you an instructor informing your readers or a student showing your mastery
of a subject to your professor?
Or you may be a design engineer explaining the rationale behind your plans to a
budget committee that will fund additional work on the project.


Purpose: this includes both your purpose as a writer and that of
your readers.
Why are you presenting the information and why are they reading?

Subject matter: is analyzed in terms of scope and complexity. What
are the most important parts of the topic?-both to you and your
audience.

Constraints: include many elements, such as budget, schedule,
resources, and format.

1.1. Audience:
Who will be reading the document?
Will they be business executives, nurses, your boss, co-workers, and a budget
committee of laypersons, hobbyists, students, children, homemakers, or
maintenance personnel?

What is the audiences level of expertise?
Are your readers as experienced as you, or are they unskilled trainees? Perhaps,
they are highly educated theorists or accomplished technicians.


Why do they need the information in your document?
Is your document simply providing information for their consideration, or will
they be acting on the points you arise? They might be allocating funds, building a
machine, rejecting a proposal, or implementing a program.

Which points are most important to them?
Are your readers most interested in the cost of implementing your
recommendations? Are your methods of greatest concern to them? Do they
need to learn how to operate the machinery you are describing, or will they be
fixing it instead?

Other audience characteristics to consider include:

Age, hobbies, income, concerns, gender, education,
occupation, location, interests, social status,
responsibilities, political affiliation, opportunities..

The information you derive from this analysis offers you an insight into choosing such
elements as vocabulary, sentence structure, graphic aids, and format.


1.2. Role:
Your role as a writer is a subset of your total self. As a writer of technical
document, you may play the role of a scientist, analyst, researcher, critic,
engineer, or advocate.

To decide the appropriateness of your role, you should rely on the readers
expectations of you. If it requires an analyst, you should be an analyst; if it
requires a consultant, you should be one.

Establishing an appropriate role is crucial because it affects the vocabulary, tone, level
of detail, order of information, choice of visuals, and so forth.

1.3. Purpose:
The overall purpose of technical writing is to communicate skills, information,
and experience.
However, it is accompanied by immediate purposes, such as allocation of budget,
implementation of a nutrition program, or installation of a new software program.

You may write about the same topic with different purposes. For example, in one
document you aim at explaining the installation process of a greenhouse whereas you
provide the reader with evidence that is the best alternative to grow vegetables in
another document. In the first one, the audience needs to learn about the materials,
dimensions, order of steps, etc. On the other hand, in the second one, they need some
scientific information and samples.
1.3. Purpose:

You may write about the same topic with different purposes. For example, in one
document you aim at explaining the installation process of a greenhouse
whereas you provide the reader with evidence that is the best alternative to
grow vegetables in another document. In the first one, the audience needs to
learn about the materials, dimensions, order of steps, etc. On the other hand, in
the second one, they need some scientific information and samples.
1.3. Purpose:
In order to state your purpose clearly, you should develop a complete statement
of purpose that includes both sets of objectives as part of your situational
analysis.
Look at the following statements:

Example:
I will compare the price and performance features of the 2012 Volkswagen Polo 1.4 to
that of the Opel Corsa Enjoy 1.4 so that my readers can choose the car that best suits their
needs.

I will describe the methods and materials I used in my experiment so that my instructor
can evaluate my performance in recent lab sessions.

1.4. Subject Matter
Say you have to write a lab report on and the subject matter will be the
experiments you have conducted. Perhaps the overall subject will be acid rain,
recombinant DNA, 4th-generation computer languages, or chimpanzees.

Subject matter is delicately balanced on these interrelated factors:
The level of detail
The order of information
The examples provided all of these aspects of subject are shaped by the analysis
of these factors.

1.4. Subject Matter

Imagine that you must go to your parents to discuss the problem and to ask for help (even
though you know it would be a burden). In this case your audience is your parents, you
role is son or daughter, and your purpose is to gain financial help from them. Assuming
that you would not be deceitful in any of these dealings, consider the differences that
would probably exist if you were discussing the same subject with each of the other two
combinations of audience, role, and purpose cited below:

Audience Role Purpose
Bank loan officer applicant borrow money
Your best friend friend enlist sympathy

1.5. Recognizing Constraints

A constraint is a limitation or prescribed method that affects a writing situation. These
elements include:

Format specifications
Schedule
Budget
Availability of information
Human resources and abilities
Production and distribution capabilities


1.5.1. Format Specifications

Not all technical writing is produced in a prescribed format, but many
companies, government agencies; universities establish their own guidelines for
preparing documents. When you need to write in a certain format, consider

all the headings you must provide,
the order of information within those categories,
the kind of graphics you can incorporate, and
the emphasis given to each section of document.

1.5.2. Schedule
Since the technical writing process unfolds in several stages, it is not necessary to do
everything in one block of time. This is more important in complex writing situations.
As part of your situational analysis, list the many activities that must be planned before
you write. These may include:
Situational analysis
Clarification of requirements
Research
Compilation of data
Initial writing
Review cycle
Revision cycle
Approval process
Production
Distribution

1.5.3. Budget

During the situational analysis you should consider several means of producing
the final documents at various prices.

Bid proposals are printed professionally and bound in a cover that carries your firms logo;
brochures for products often justify the use of expensive photography and glossy paper;
manuals may be printed by an outside vendor.


1.5.4. Availability of Information
Very often only a single person (a guru) knows the facts about a forthcoming
design. Usually key reports are available only to those with certain security
clearances. Some information may be filed in a government document
depository 50 miles away. All such factors affect your writing.

Also, the lack of sufficient writing resources is key problem in business and industry. You
need to design work, research, and write reports in your field.

Phase 2. Gathering Information
Research, the act of gathering information, is the second step if technical writing
process.

Most writing projects require some degree of research;
whether you are confirming information you already have or are learning new material.

2. Phase : Gathering Information
2.1.1. Conducting Primary Research

A good report is based on solid, accurate, verifiable facts. Primary research, the
process of creating and discovering information, can take various forms, such as
interviewing, surveying, experimenting, taking notes at meetings, and recording
personal experiences.
Typical sources of factual information for reports include:

interviews
observation & experimentation
surveys, questionnaires, and inventories


Interviews:

Technical writing may require you to interview with experts in the field. Talking with
individuals directly concerned with the problem produces excellent firsthand information.
For example, if you are researching whether your company should install wireless
technology, you could interview an expert in wireless technology about the pros and cons.
Interviews are usually conducted in person, because much information is conveyed
through nonverbal means such as facial expressions, hand gestures, and posture.
Interviews also allow for one-on-one communication, thus giving you an opportunity to
explain your questions and ideas to elicit the most accurate information. However, it is
possible to conduct an interview over the phone or even by mail.


Observation and experimentation
Some kinds of primary data can be obtained only through firsthand observation and
experimentation. If you determine that the questions you have require observational
data, then you need to plan the observations carefully. One of the most important
questions to ask is what or whom you are observing and how often those observations
are necessary to provide reliable data. For example, if you want to learn more about an
organizations customer-service phone service, you probably need to use observation
techniques, along with interviews and perhaps even surveys.

You will want to answer questions such as, How long does a typical caller wait before a
customer-service rep answers the call? and Is the service consistent?


Observation produces rich data, but that information is especially prone to charges of
subjectivity. One can interpret an observation in many ways. Thus, to make observations
more objective, try to quantify them.
For example, record customer telephone wait-time for 60-minute periods at different
times throughout a week. This will give you a better picture than just observing for an
hour on a Friday before a holiday. If you were writing a report on the need for a
comprehensive policy on the use of digital media, you might observe how employees are
using e-mail and the Web for personal errands or whether they spread potentially
damaging company information in their blogs.


Experimentation produces data suggesting causes and effects. Informal experimentation
might be as simple as a pretest and posttest in a college course. Did students expand their
knowledge as a result of the course? More formal experimentation is undertaken by
scientists and professional researchers who control variables to test their effects.

Assume, for example, that the Hershey Company wants to test the hypothesis (which is a
tentative assumption) that chocolate lifts people out of the doldrums. An experiment
testing the hypothesis would separate depressed individuals into two groups: those who
ate chocolate (the experimental group) and those who did not (the control group). What
effect did chocolate have? Such experiments arent done haphazardly, however. Valid
experiments require sophisticated research designs and careful attention to matching the
experimental and control groups.


Surveys, Questionnaires, and Inventories:
Surveys collect data from groups of people. For example, if you were part of a committee
investigating the success of an employee carpooling program, you might begin by using a
questionnaire. When companies develop new products, for example, they often survey
consumers to learn their needs. The advantages of surveys are that they gather data
economically and efficiently. Surveys can be mailed to participants, or they can be
administered online. Both mailed and online surveys reach big groups nearby or at great
distances. Moreover, people responding to mailed and online surveys have time to
consider their answers, thus improving the accuracy of the data.

2.1.2. Conducting Secondary Research

Secondary data are easier and cheaper to develop than primary data, which might involve
interviewing large groups or sending out questionnaires. Moreover, secondary data is
where nearly every research project should begin because, very often, something has
already been written about your topic. Reviewing secondary sources can save time and
effort and prevent you from reinventing the wheel. Most secondary material is available
either in print or electronically.


Printed Materials: Although we have observed a steady movement away from print to
electronic data, print sources are still the most visible part of most libraries. Much
information is available only in print. Print sources include books, newspapers and
periodicals, such as magazines and journals.

Books: Even though they quickly outdate, books provide excellent historical, in-depth
data on a large variety of subjects. They can be located through print catalogs or online
catalogs. Most automated systems today enable you to learn not only whether a book is
in the library but also whether it is currently available. Therefore, it is much easier to
search for a book now.


Periodicals. Magazines, pamphlets, and journals are called periodicals because of their recurrent, or
periodic, publication. Journals are compilations of scholarly articles. Articles in journals and other
periodicals will be extremely useful to you because they are concise, limited in scope, and current,
and can supplement information in books.

Bibliographic indexes. The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature is a valuable index of general-
interest magazine article titles. It includes such magazines as Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and
U.S. News & World Report. More useful to business writers, though, will be the titles of articles
appearing in business and industrial magazines and newspapers (such as Forbes, Fortune, The
Economist, BusinessWeek, Barrons, and The Wall Street Journal). For an index of these publications,
consult the Business Periodicals Index. Most indexes today are available in print, CD-ROM, and Web
versions for easy searching.


Electronic Resources: An extensive source of current and historical information is available
electronically by using a computer to connect to the Web, electronic databases, and other online
resources. From a computer you can access storehouses of information provided by the government,
newspapers, magazines, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. Business researchers are also using
such electronic tools as mailing lists, discussion boards, and blogs to conduct research.

Electronic (online) Databases
A database is a collection of information stored electronically so that it is accessible by computer and
digitally searchable. Databases provide both bibliographic (titles of documents and brief abstracts) as
well as full-text documents. Most researchers prefer full-text documents. Various databases contain a
rich array of magazine, newspaper, and journal articles, as well as newsletters, business reports,
company profiles, government data, reviews, and directories.


Electronic (online) Databases

ISI- Emerging Markets -EMIS
ScienceDirect
ASEE (American Society of Engineering
Education)
ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital
Library
Blackwell Journal Archives
Economist Historical Archive
Elsevier Electronic Books
Global Market Information
Database/Passport GMID
LISTA
EBSCO Business Source Premier
Factiva
ABI/Inform
LexisNexis
DOAJ- Directory Of Open Access Journals
ERIC
Humanities International Complete

The Web
The best-known area of the Internet is the World Wide Web. It includes an enormous collection of
Web sites around the world. With trillions of pages of information available on the Web, chances are
that if you have a question, an answer exists online. The Web is unquestionably one of the greatest
sources of information available to anyone who needs simple facts quickly and inexpensively. Web
offerings include online databases, magazines, newspapers, library resources, sound and video files,
and many other information resources. You can expect to find such items as product and service
facts, public relations material, mission statements, staff directories, press releases, current company
news, government information, selected article reprints, collaborative scientific project reports, stock
research, financial information, and employment information. The Web is indeed a vast network of
resources at your fingertips

The Web
Even though, the Web is easy to use and cheap, it has some disadvantages, as well:

Finding relevant, credible information can be frustrating and time consuming. The constantly
changing contents of the Web and its lack of organization irritate the researchers.

Content isnt always reliable. Anyone posting a Web site is a publisher without any quality control or
guarantee.

The problem of gathering information is complicated by the fact that the total number of Web sites
recently surpassed 100 million, growing at a rate of about 4 million new addresses each month.

Company Records:

Many business reports begin with an analysis of company records and files. From these
records you can observe past performance and methods used to solve previous problems.
You can collect pertinent facts that will help determine a course of action.
Phase 3. Planning & Arranging
After collecting your facts, you need coherent plan for presenting them. Many
organizational patterns are available in parallelism with the purpose of the
report and the materials collected:
chronological,
geographical,
alphabetical,
sequential,
topical,
Problem-solution
and so forth
1. Chronological order. :
Information sequenced along a time frame is arranged chronologically.
This plan is effective for presenting historical data or for describing a procedure.

are usually organized by time.

A description of the development of a multinational company, for example, would be
chronological.

Often topics are arranged in a past-to-present or present-to past sequence.
minutes of meetings,
progress reports, and
procedures
2. Geographical or spatial arrangement:

Information arranged geographically or spatially is organized by physical location.

For instance, a report analyzing a companys national sales might be divided into sections
representing geographical areas such as the East, South, Midwest, West, and Northwest.

3. Topical or functional arrangement:

Some subjects lend themselves to arrangement by topic or function.

A report analyzing changes in the management hierarchy of an organization might be
arranged in this manner. First, the report would consider the duties of the CEO followed
by the functions of the general manager, business manager, marketing manager, and so
forth.
Phase 3 . Planning & Arranging

4. Order of increasing difficulty
Computer manuals often start with the easiest material and move on to more complex
operations or functions

5. Sequential order
The installation of equipment must be done in a certain order, and the instructions must
be presented in this certain order.

6. Alphabetical order
A booklet on vitamins (A, B, B1,) is usually arranged in this way, or this is logical to use for
the directory of company employees


7. Problem-Solution

This format begins with the statement of the problem and ends with the solution applied.
Case histories, proposals and user success stories are written in this format.

8. Inverted pyramid
Newspaper style of news reporting: summary of the story is given in the leading
paragraph, then, the events are presented in order of decreasing importance in the
following paragraphs. Applicable for journal articles, letters, memos, reports.

9. Deductive order
Starting with a generalization, & supporting it with facts, research results, etc. later.
Scientists use this format in research papers that begin with the findings and move on
with the supports.

10. Inductive order
Starting with one or more examples or stories, then, lead the reader to the main
conclusion or principle. Useful approach in trade-journal feature stories.

11. List
Divide your discussion into a series of distinct points, & separate the points using
subheads, bullets, or numbers. Present the points on order of priority.

Phase 4 . Writing & Revising
Writing begins with your thesis. Although the thesis is not always a proposition or
argument in technical writing, a specific message usually takes precedence over all
others in the document.

In the case of a status (progress) report, for instance, the focal point might be simply that
all the projects are on schedule and are progressing according to the plan.

In the case of a proposal, your main point might be that the contract should be awarded
to your firm because it is best equipped to handle the complex job.

A users manual might convey the primary message that using IBM PC XT can help you
increase productivity, whereas the mechanism description may point out the many ways
in which the Honeywell DPS 88 computer system is fault-tolerant.


Guideline 1.Develop Topic Sentences for Paragraphs

The outline you have developed is the ideal platform from which to launch your writing
activity.

As you develop the outline, you consider your primary message (thesis / purpose
statement) and arrange supporting information in ways that would meet the needs of
your audience.

From that outline, you can develop skeletal paragraphs as you continue writing.

Guideline 2. Develop Support for Topic Sentences

A paragraph is a distinct portion of a document dealing with a particular, single idea.

An individual paragraph should not cover more than one topic. The supporting sentences
you create should be linked to the topic sentence.


Guideline 2. Develop Support for Topic Sentences

Working from the outline and topic sentences you create, you can develop supporting
sentences in several ways:

1. By answering the implied question Why is this true? and supplying your answers as a support
2. By recognizing the whole-to-parts relationship between bits of information and making those
connections clear to reader
3. By moving from general statement in the topics sentence to successively more specific points in
the body of the paragraph
4. By recognizing a chronological or sequential pattern ( working forward or backward from the
topic sentence)


Guideline 3. Select appropriate sentence structure

Each of four basic sentence structures shows their strengths and effects. Once you are
aware of the impact of each type of sentence, you can select the best structure for your
message.

The sentence types are appropriate:
1. Simple sentence: when your reader needs to concentrate on a single, unelaborated point.
2. Compound sentence: used to demonstrate a dynamic equality between two or more ideas.
3. Complex sentence: -the most common structure- to demonstrate a dependent relationship of
one idea to another
4. Compound-complex sentence: useful for balancing two complex ideas.



1. Simple sentence: when your reader needs to concentrate on a single, unelaborated point.

To determine if a simple sentence is best, ask these questions:

Does the reader need to concentrate on a single, unelaborated idea?
Should the idea be the focal point of the paragraph?
Is an arresting beginning required for the paragraph in order to catch the readers eye?
Will rhythmic alternation of sentence patterns help drive home information?
Is the subject sufficiently complex to be broken into smaller, more manageable units?



2. Compound sentence: used to demonstrate a dynamic equality between two or more ideas.

To determine if a compound sentence is best, you need to ask only one question:

Should a dynamic relationship of equality, sequence, or tension between two or more ideas be
stressed?



3. Complex sentence: -the most common structure- to demonstrate a dependent relationship of one
idea to another

To determine the effectiveness of a complex sentence in a situation, you should ask these questions

Will information be clarified if ideas are combined?
Do natural or logical relationships exist between two or more ideas that are important to readers?
Will the message be more concise if such relationships are pinpointed?



Compare the effectiveness of these two samples:

Zeolites make extra gasoline yield possible. Some countries depend on extra gasoline yield in order to
survive oil shortages

Some countries survive oil shortages because of the extra gasoline yield that zeolites make
possible.

While writing complex sentences, be sure to place the more important information in the
independent portion of the sentence.


Guideline 4. Select appropriate language

After revising the sentence structure, you can concentrate on words and phrases within the
sentences. A common problem is wordiness. To avoid this, you may identify these by circling them:

Repetition: the use of same words or phrases several times in a single passage
Prepositional phrases: used to indicate such relationships between a subject and an
object, such as after, at, before, by, from, in, of, to, with.
Relative clauses: complete ideas that modify another part of the sentence, beginning
with that, which, who, whom
Expletives: words acting as fillers that add no meaning to the sentence, such as there
is, there are.


Guideline 4. Select appropriate words

To improve word choice in your draft, you may identify the following elements by circling
them:

Noun phrases: groups of words that function collectively as nouns ( all those participating
= participants ; individuals being trained = trainees)
Modifiers: words, phrases, or clauses that describe another part of the sentence (the
temperature dropped extremely fast)
Passive constructions


Guideline 4. Select appropriate words

Jargon: technical terminology, generally understood only by those schooled in a specific
discipline ( end-user computer, biomimetics, debug, embolism, vascularization)

Highly connotative words and phrases: emotionally charged, judgmental, or manipulative
language rather than objective language (fluff = extraneous material , despicable methods
= suspect methods)

Generalities: vague, nondescriptive language that can cause confusion (thing, seemed,
something)


Guideline 5. Check the logic and completeness

Each paragraph of your draft should prepare the way for the next paragraph; it should
create the context for understanding what follows. Likewise, sentences in each paragraph
should unfold logically. And each point you bring up should be discussed thoroughly
enough for your readers.



To achieve completeness, relationships between the ideas sentences- should be clear.
This relationship is provided mostly by transitional words or phrases that move the reader
from point to point. Another method to use is integrating certain indicators of
relationship into sentences. They help the reader follow the development of ideas.



You can employ following techniques:

Repeat a key word or idea
Use synonym of the keyword Use an antonym of the keyword
Use words that are commonly paired
Use a pronoun ( with clear reference to the noun it replaces)


Guideline 6. Check the mechanics

You must be certain that your draft is correct in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You
can check the most common grammar mistakes:

Subjects and verbs do not agree
Nouns and pronouns do not agree in number and gender
Verb tense shifts. ( if you are using past tense, you must maintain it throughout the document)
Voice shifts without reason form passive to active and back again
Modifiers ( adjectives, adverbs, and relative clauses) are nor places as close as possible to the part
of sentence they describe
Sentence fragments occur
A comma is used when a conjunction, semicolon, or period is appropriate


Guideline 6. Check the mechanics
You must adhere to format specifications concerning

length,
order,
use of headings,
indentation,
pagination,
type requirements,
content,
style,
dimensions,
margins,
captions,
fonts,
figures, and tables.


The Review Cycle

After writing the draft, you circulate it among your colleagues, technical experts, or supervisors to
ensure its accuracy and completeness. Because reading your document is a legitimate part of their
job, and because it is their responsibility to ensure your accuracy, these reviewers pay attention to
every word.
If you have gathered enough information, planned its exposition, and revised your draft into a clear
document, you will take pleasure in this experience. Your document will come back to you with
remarks like Excellent job, see my notes on page 15 or Okay as written .

In the worst case, your reviewers tell you about the problem and suggest changes. Then, it is your
responsibility to evaluate and implement them as soon as possible. If necessary, you send your
document to a second technical review to ensure that the changes you have made are satisfactory.
Then, you can submit it for approval to the proper authority.


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