English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

In this blog I will tell you about what I took from chapter 8 (TCT), The basic principle of the writing formula, and the organizational effectiveness of an outline. Both ideas I have only recently took advantage of within writing.

I can't agree more with how important it is to structure a document well so that others can easily understand it. As a software engineer, I can relate this to programming. Programming is somewhat similar to writing English except in the case of programming, the documents written are meant to be read by the computer and other programmers. However, a lot of programmers forget that their code must be readable by other programmers and write it in a way such that only the author and the computer can understand them. There is a very large branch in software engineering dealing with how to write well designed and structured code.

Chapter 8- Organizing and Drafting
The main point of this chapter is that you need to present your information in a predictable and usable way. For example, with a resume you cannot have your information thrown about on a sheet of paper; you have to have it follow a certain pattern so the reader can obtain it all.

After reading through chapter 8 the main topic of organization is one that I find that I need to focus more on when writing. When it comes down to writing anything of importance the need for organization is key. With out any form of organizing your writings it will prove to be more difficult than if you were to organize your writings prior.

I am an agricultural communications major. This means that much of my academic career has been spent writing and speaking. While reading Chapter 8 of Telcomunications Today, I thought about what I did when I was preparing to write papers or speeches in the past. I certainly could have used some of the information shared about generes. Although this seems like a simple process, putting some serious though into what format you will use to convey a message can be the difference between your audience understanding and acting or not.

When I started reaching Chapter 8 of TCT there was one idea right out of the introduction stood out to me: “You need to organize the information… into patterns that are familiar to your readers” (TCT 180). Thinking about the way we view and transmit information, organization is important, and not just in writing applications.

Chapter 8 explains how to build and organize a document starting from a chosen topic. This chapter also covers different genres of technical documents and identifies two different types of audiences. There are two main ideas that I feel are very important when writing a document: an outline and writing what you know first.

I found Chapter 8 – Organizing and Drafting to be somewhat of a review. Most of material we have seen since middle or high school, but I guess it’s important to really know it. I did, however, find a few interesting tips/comments on conclusions and genres. I just need to make sure I think about these tips when I’m writing.

“Today, effective “information management” is one of the great challenges to communicating effectively in the technical workplace.” – This quote really conveys the meaning behind why we are reading these chapters and why we are even taking this course. I wanted to mention how important I thought this quote was, as it really gives me reason to appreciate what we are learning throughout this course. I also found it interesting that technical documents should be approached as basically any other document; it should contain an introduction, a body, and an end.

Chapter 8 of “Technical Communication Today” stressed the importance of properly organizing documents. While the main concept of the chapter has been discussed in several of my other Communication and English classes over the years, it did contain some new information. It provided several ways of aiding in doing so as well as several different organizational structures.