Creating Technical Descriptions
By: Jake Droessler and Elijah Wreh
Objectives and Outcomes:
-Understand that technical descriptions’ can be used to organize specific details about, substances, mechanisms, organisms, systems, and locations for an identified audience.
-Summarize physical characteristics, answering questions you expect your readers to have about appearance, acceptability, and impact.
-Use technical descriptions in observation notes, manuals and training materials, proposals and reports, marketing and promotional materials, and public information and education.
-Prepare technical descriptions:
-Meet audience needs by answering their questions
-Partition your subject into structural parts and/or functional parts
-Adjust diction to audience needs, choosing accurate terms, and using appropriative
metaphors.
-Choose from a variety of visuals: photographs or realistic drawings, topographic and
Contour maps, phantom views, overlaps, schematics and writing diagrams, cross-
Section maps, exploded views, blueprints.
-Typically use spatial order to give a clear view of appearance and structure.
Defining Technical Description
The word descriptions have many meanings, but in short description summarize physical characteristics, answer questions you expect your readers to look at. Some of the characters of descriptions as are following: substance, mechanism, organism, system, or location. Some of the questions one may include ion their descriptions are: What is it or what are you talking about, the definition of what you talking about, who describe it, the purpose, importance and impact, the characteristics, appearance and parts involved.
Using Technical Description
This aspect of technical description explains when one needs to know how to use technical description. One needs to know when to use technical communication when writing a technical paper, article, or document. You need to also include a detail description about what you are talking about and writing. They are important because they will help you to know whether these descriptions will help in accomplishing your purpose, will a single description help the audience accomplish their purpose, and will the description help stop future problems.
Observation Notes
This part focuses on answering questions that will help in getting description of what you are writing about. After taking down observation notes, the notes, the notes will then will write down so the audience can read them, or may be used as the starting point for a more official document.
Training Materials
This involve the type of descriptive tools been used in description technical writing. It includes the type of system the technical writer will use and put into play. The materials need to be important in other for it play a pivotal role in your writing and give the audience an incite about what you talking about.
Proposals and Reports
The proposals can range in size from a one page letter to several hundred pages of feature specifications. In other words, the writing proposal is a vehicle that carries the terms of an agreement and form parts of the basis for a subsequent paper or document. The reports are incorporated in the description and served as overall aspect of the technical description.
Marketing and Promotional Pieces
Technical descriptions are both informative and persuasive when used in marketing materials. The main points are stressed and other information is put on the specification sheets (specs). These pieces often include visual aids.
Public Information and Education
Public information usually has a lot of description because it consists of details that people need to know. The three main forms of presentation for public information are newspapers, general-interest magazines, and Web sites. This information is usually accompanied by visuals.
Preparing a Technical Description:
Audience’s Task
Technical descriptions should address their intended audience. A writer needs to analyze the purpose of reading the document and identify what questions are expected to be answered:
·Why do users want or need the information? What is their task? In what ways will the information be important?
· Do they need information in order to understand a more detailed discussion that follows? Do they need to make a decision?
· Are users interested in a general overview or a detailed description?
· What details do the users need: Dimensions? Materials? Assembly? Function? Capabilities? Benefits?
Insufficient information will lead to unanswered questions. Use information that responds to the audiences’ probable questions.
Components
In order to describe something you need to separate it into different components. Some confusion can occur when trying to separate. To easily separate something you need to look at two parts:
Functional parts-perform clearly defined tasks in the operation of the device. Although there is one single structural part, it can have multiple functioning parts.
Structural parts-comprise the physical aspects of the device, without regard to purpose.
Diction
Diction of a technical description should be precise, so the information can be verified. To be able to be precise you need to:
1. Choose the most specific terms appropriate for your audience.
2. Choose technically accurate terms.
3. Consider the value of metaphor to convey descriptions.
Audience-appropriate terms
You need to cater your terms to your audience, bring the terms into their level. Not everyone is an expert on the topic so they need to be able to understand what you are talking about.
Accurate Terms
Using accurate terms is another way to be precise in technical descriptions. An example is differentiating between two and three dimensional objects. Is a ball round or is it spherical? By doing this you can avoid confusing your audience.
Figurative Language
Do metaphors, similes, and analogies give your readers a clear description? By looking at this question you can determine if your readers will understand the terms you are using to describe your subject.
Visuals
Using precise visuals is just as important as using precise diction. Visuals help your audience form a mental image of the subject you are describing. Remember to label and title visuals. The purpose of a visual is:
· Visuals give an overview.
· Visuals describe interior components; give an image of the way parts fit together.
· Visuals describe individual parts in relation to the whole; give an image of each individual component.
· Visuals show patterns.
Organization
When preparing a technical description, you need to decide on your sequence of information. Technical descriptions are usually given in spatial order to help the audience have a clear view of appearance and structure. Sometimes chronological order is used; an example would be how to assemble a staples box. Technical descriptions should have a title or a section heading. This gives a good definition and a statement of the purpose or function of the document. You may need to incorporate material elements that will increase interest in the document. Here are some elements that can help you add interest and appeal:
· Background information: What is the history? What are current developments?
· Parts-whole relationships: Where does the object fit in relation to similar ones?
· Qualitative distinctions: What separates it from similar objects?
The body of a technical description should use a part-by-part description arranged in order of location, assembly, or importance. Each section of the body needs to keep the same format.
The conclusion of a technical description needs to explain how the parts fit and function together. To make the conclusion more interesting tries to include the following elements:
· Applications: How is it used?
· Anecdotes or brief narratives: Who uses it?
· Advantages/disadvantages: What are the benefits and/or problems?
21 comments:
I thought this chapter was kind of similar to the other ones. I felt like most of it we had either talked about it before or it gave you a definition for something that we have been doing for a while. I guess I felt this chapter didn't really add information. It did give some information about defining words and making them appropriate for your audience, but thats about it.
The part of the chapter on organization I thought was interesting because I know how organized I am. Organization can be a big help when it comes to most things. Having your life and school work organized can help in everyday activities. Organization is key to a successful presentation or any other project or work that one does in education.
This chapter goes into a little more detail then the other chapters on how to make sure your audience understands the information you are presenting to them. It makes you think of what the reader would be wondering when they were done reading your text. It is just like a reminder to sometimes “dumb down” your text so that you audience will understand the best they can of what you are trying to put across.
After having done my TPR, and listening to other people's TPRs, this chapter seems very important. The most important thing is audience, audience audience. If they aren't understanding the information, or interested in reading or listening to it then you are just wasting your time. This chapter stresses the importance of using descriptions to help with definitions and make the technical terms understandable to those who aren't experts on the topic.
This chapter I also agree felt somewhat repetitive. The chapter about detentions and describing them. I felt that this chapter didn't add a whole lot of information, seemed as if it was kind of a summary about other chapters we have read.
I don't think I've ever had to write technical descriptions. I'm sure later in my life/career I will come across this task. One thing that caught my attention was the section on proposals. In high school, another girl and myself wrote a proposal to the principal (if I remember right) because we, along with the National Honor Society, wanted to start paper recycling. Looking back, I'm sure it wasn't as detailed or "technical" as it could have been. This chapter was informational but I don't foresee myself utilizing the information for awhile.
I think it is very important for a reader to understand the information in which they are reading. Using technical information in descriptions is one thing but you yourself has to clearly understand your subject to successfully explain it to your audience. This is in terms in which is appropriate for your audience because if it's too hard to understand, they are not going to register it right and understand what you are talking about.
Technical definitions used in my field of study are usually material safety data sheets, or MSDS. These give all technical information for the product that is being used, from chemical compound to safety requirements, and also including what not to use this product with. Technical data sheets are a basic guide for the audience to use to understand all functions or specific function of a product.
this seemed like an overview of what the chapters have covered. It brought all of the categories together and went into more detail of what the audience needs. Basically the most important thing is that the audience understands what you are talking about.
I think this is like ch. 14. In the way that it gives us the information on what is a technical definition and how we make one. This chapter goes a little more into other stuff like organization. Orginization is also in other chapters, but it is a key part in getting something to be good.
I think for the most part this chapter just summarized some of the other chapters before. But it did add some key information about organizing information so that you can better explain it to your audience. This chapter might have been nice to read before I did my TPR.
Along with a lot of the other posts i feel that a lot of this information has already been covered. However the subjects that were covered was important information that we need to be well rounded technical communicators. so i guess it was a good review.
I feel that this chapter was very similar to other ones. I talked about using a technical descriptions. However i do think that this is an important topic because a technical description can be a very helpful tool. Using a technical document can help your audience better understand the topic you are talked about. The reason it can be so helpful is because it is a more in depth description.
This section here really didn't seem too much different that the section I just got done summarizing. It did give a lot of interesting places where you would use last chapter's topics though. Also the organization came up again also and how you were supposed to take your audience into consideration. It is becoming apparent that when writing a technical document the author puts a lot of weight on who you audience is and they are one of the most important parts of your document.
Like a lot of the other chapters the main focus is making sure your audience understands the material. This chapter seems to go into more detail focusing on the introduction/defintions of the topic being presented.
The most important part of a technical communication writer's job is to make sure the audience understands the material. This can involve giving clear, precise examples of what you are explaining and the message you are trying to present. This could can be applied to the TPR presentations we have in class, because it is easy for us to talk about something we are familiar with, but the audience may not understand what you are presenting.
I think this would have been a great chapter to go over before doing my Technical Presentation Report. Technical descriptions and definitions were very important in those reports, being that you had to explain a difficult topic to an audience that knew nothing about it. Helping the audience or reader understand the material through definitions and descriptions is not just a good idea, but most likely essential to a good presentaion or document. After all, if the audience doesn't understand your topic, they will most likely not continue to give you their attention.
A good technical description is usually very helpful within another technical document. Instruction and assembly manuals usually contain technical descriptions for the individual parts needed to complete the item being assembled. I found it very helpful that pictures, measurements, and names of different types of nuts, bolts, and screws were given when I was installing a garage door. Some of the lags had red paint on their heads, and the instruction manual made it clear that these lags were for a special purpose and even had pictures that indicated these lags were colored differently from the others. These technical descriptions were extremely valuable when putting together the garage door.
This chapter is similar to one of the previous chapter. Howvever it gives more emphasis on techincal description. I think writing lab reports for subjects like Chemistry and Physics are similar to technical description. Here we are giving the detail instruction of the overall procedure.
This chapter is interesting and helpful. I use technical descriptions every time I have a chemistry lab for writing my lab reports. Technical descriptions can be very complicated with a whole bunch of technical jargon so the author has to be careful and know what type of audienc he/she is writing for.
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