Burnett Chapter 15 Creating Technical Descriptions
Defining a Technical Description is necessary to address the potential questions an audience may have about an object, substance, mechanism, organism, system, or location. In order to address the potential questions of an audience one needs to ask the following questions:
1. What is it? How is it defined? By whom?
2. What is its purpose? What is its importance or impcat?
3. What are the characteristics of the whole?
What does it look like?
What are its characteristics?
4. What are its parts? What is "normal" or "typical"? What are within acceptable tolerances or specifications?
What is the appearance of each part?
What are the distinctive characteristics of each part?
5. How do the parts fit together? How do they work together? What defines effective function?
Which of these questions are answered depends on the depth of detail required by the description. Complex descriptions clearly answer more questions.
One needs to examine their document in the following ways to determine whether or not to include technical descriptions:
1. Will a description help accomplish your purpose of providing information, persuading readers or listeners, or helping them complete a task?
2. Will a description help members of the audience accomplish their purpose of gathering information, making a decision, or completing an action or activity?
3. Will a description help prevent problems?
Areas commonly using technical descriptions:
Most technical manuals include a technical description of the mechanism or system that the manual deals with. The description usually appears in one of the manual's early sections, often providing a general overview followed by more detailed information.
Technical descriptions in marketing materials are usually both informative and persuasive. The information presents an overview, identifying major components and characteristics.
When a description helps the audience understand and approve a proposal.
Marketing and Promotional pieces are usually both informative and persuasive. The information presents an overview, identifying major components and characteristics.
Public Information and Education use a substantial amount of description because people need to know what something is before they make decisions about its value.
Preparing a technical descripton you need to identify the audience and task, determine the components, choose prercise diction, design effective visuals, and select an appropriate format.
Audience task. ask the audience these questions.
1. why do users want or need the information? what is their task? In what ways will the information be important?
2. do they need information in order to understand a more detailed discussion that follows? do they need to make a decision?
3. are the users interested in a general overview or a detailed description?
Components
Structural parts comprise the physical aspects of the device, without regard to purpose. For example, a simple house key is made of a single piece of metal.
Functional parts perform clearly defined task in the operation of the device. although the key has a single structural part, it has multiple functional parts.
figurative language
Is a way to ensure precision is to consider whether figurative language such as metaphors, similes, and analogies would give readers a clear description.
Visuals
Precise visuals are as important in effective technical description as is precise diction. Visuals enable the audience to form a mental image of the subject being described.
Organization
When preparing a technical description you have to make decisions about the sequence of information. Writers conventionally organize technical descriptions in spatial order to give the audience a clear view of apperance and structure.
Planning a Technical Description
1. Define the object (or substance, mechanism, organism, system or location) in the introduction.
2. Present a part-by-part description arranged in order of the parts assembly, location, or importance.
3. Conclude the description.
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16 comments:
Often, technical descriptions can be confusting to comprehend. Depending on the application, it may take just as much time to understand the description as it takes to assemble or begin the item being explained. Alot of this confusion can be eliminated. Chapter 15 mentions a series of questions to ask oneself before preparing a technical description. If these questions are asked and appropriately answered, the outcome of the technical description will be much more user friendly.
Deciding whether or not to include a technical description really depends on the audience you are writing the document for. Determining your audience is the most important part of writing these descriptions. If it is for learning purposes, then more information will have to be place into the document. This section helped me figure out what to look for when determining your audience and other factors to figure into your description. Currently, I am working on a manual for our truck drivers for different procedures they need to perform each day. With in this book let, they will find descriptions of different tasks and even though some drivers have more experience than others you still have to prepare the document for the newest of employees.
I think this is a very well written article. Some of the technical descriptions are unnecessary for some things and some are necessary. Some of the descriptions can be difficult to understand and are written for people in higher education. I think that they should be used only for a certain audience.
I thought that the article explained technical descriptions very well. Technical descriptions are used for a lot of every day uses that we dont even realize. I think it is important to factor in the type of audience when creating the technical description becuase you wouldnt want to say anything to offend someone. It is also important to make sure that the technical description fits the description and makes sense.
I have been working on a project since the beginning of the semester in my industrial automation class, and just about any piece of equipment i have been using using, i had to refer to the technical manuals from the manufacturers for connection diagrams and other specifications. The manuals are so detailed and it takes a substantial amount of time to locate all the pieces of information your interested in. Technical descriptions included in the manuals are so important because they are accompanied by a variety of visuals. I have personally found this chapter very important and Taylor did an excellent job in summarizing it.
I agree, technical descriptions are important, but can be hard to understand. They are definitely intended for a specific rather than a general audience. They aren't things that can be written quickly--they need to be gone over in order to make them readable and easy for people to understand. However they're probably more important than some people realize.
When looking at certain documents with technical descriptions you have to be careful becuase they can be very confusing at times if you don't know alot about the object you are trying assemble. It can also take foever to even read and understand the document rather than just trying to put the product together. This chapter gave specific questions to ask yourself when you are reading technical descriptions to make sure you understand it. I thought they did a very nice job outlining chapter 15.
This chapter 15 is really important for writing. Mostly technical descriptions is tough to understand but it gives vast knowledge and make clear to the subject.This part make us to recognize whole things which the document has.But the method of using visual are good to further understanding.But this writing consume more time and materials which we should think lot.
I think difficulty reading technical descriptions not only depends on how well it is written, it also depends on each person. Some people find it easier to understand a written description or direction than another person. For example, I just recently bought a bluetooth headset, but I couldn't figure out how to get the damn thing connected to my phone. I mean I'll be honest the directions were not helping at all. I took it in to best buy and the geek squad had it figured out in about 5 minutes.
There are many companies that do a horrible job with technical description, mainly by making it too "technical" for the intended audience. In such situations, trying to understand what you are reading is next to impossible. If the reader just gives up in understanding what is written, the entire purpose has been defeated.
Once again prior planning is essential. Knowing who your audience will be will allow you to make a timely desicion on how tailor the technical content of your document to meet the needs and answer the questions of your audience.
The chapter gives a good knowledge about the techinical description. I agree that the technical description is important for technical communication. Technical description should be simple and understandable to the targeted audience. For instance technical description for the new users should be in simple language. Also, from the chapter 15, think asking question and answering before preparing technical description helps for the proper outcome.
I feel that many times technical descriptions can be very confusing to a common person with less knowledge on the subject than the writer of them. I feel that the writers of technical descriptions need to take into account that the people who may be using them may not be as well educated as them on the subject and write in a way that is more suitable to educate and explain the process to everyone. I think that the outcome of a technical description in the end should be user friendly to everyone.
According to the blog posted by Taylor, Technical Description is necessary to address the potential questions an audience may have about an object, substance, mechanism, organism, system, or location. In order to address the potential questions of an audience one needs to ask a set of questions that might arise after a presentation or publication of reports. Preparing a technical description we need to identify the audience and task, components, choose precise pronunciation, design effective visuals, and select a suitable design. The blog posted is very helpful to the readers who wants to know about technical descriptions.
this chapter talked about Creating Technical Descriptions. i think that technical descriptions are very important in our society today. there are alot of things that would not be understood if they didnt include technical descriptions. alot of instructions on how to put something together contain this information and this makes it alot easier to complete a task.
I think that the understanding of a technical description depends on who is reading it and whether or not they are familiar with the subject in the first place. If I am reading a description on something that I know nothing about, I still will probably not know much about it after the description. Writing technical descriptions has to be rather difficult and very time consuming because of all the detail.
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