English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I have to say, I was pretty surprised by the Thomson Handbook's statement that capturing screenshots can be difficult and even time-consuming. While I can't speak for PCs (although Google informs me that you simply have to press the 'Print Screen' key), I can tell you that Mac has a some great key shortcuts that make it easy to catch anything on your screen and turn it into an image file. For any Mac users in the class, here are the shortcuts:

I have a lot of personal experience with reading and writing instructions. I do a lot of things with computers and I very often times have to read instructions on how to accomplish something. Often times, my friends ask me for help with their computer over the phone or IM and I have to give them instructions on how to fix their computer. This reminds me of a scene from the show The IT Crowd. You can watch the episode here:

http://www.channel4.com/video/the-it-crowd/series-1/episode-1/customer-s...

After reading through all the resources about there was one thing that I noticed, I never knew that there was so much that went into creating a set of instructions for a product someone is trying to sell. I have always had an idea of what needs to be included in a set of instructions but never knew that writing a set of instructions was so involved. Chapter 19 goes into a great deal of depth in explaining how to write one's instructions. The bulk of this information deals with how to organize information while writing instructions.

While I was reading through the material for this week, I mostly tried to relate by thinking about how I use instructions and what what I look for.

It seems that, by now, the importance of considering the audience is somewhat cliché. Of course this is the theme of these chapters which plays into how one plans these sorts of documents. The readings discuss the vital role of researching even things that seem, to the advanced user, benign or irrelevant. Figure 20.5 may be excessive for some applications, but it does a good job at expressing many of the points for consideration when formulating a set of instructions.

Within Chapter 19, Chapter 20, and the Instructor Blog #4 there was a lot of very interesting information introduced. The task of writing instructions is almost spelled out into an art. Similarly as writing a normal technical document, Chapter 20 explains that while writing instructions a writer has to think of the primary, secondary, tertiary, and gatekeepers of the document. Also the writer has to think about what is offensive to other cultures when writing the document.

After finishing this week’s readings, I had a hard time trying to figure out the real importance of Chapter 19 about technical descriptions in relation to instructions. It came to me that instructions are really descriptions of a process. Even with this I think Chapter 20 did a great job of underlining steps and process for good instructional writing. One thing Chapter 20 mentioned to do is to provide feedback throughout the process to ensure the reader they are doing everything correctly.

This week’s reading provided plenty of good insight into creating technical descriptions and instructions. Chapter 19 focused on creating technical descriptions while the others readings focused on creating instructions. While some of the reading was very similar to concepts read in other readings, there was plenty of good advice given.

Today’s readings on technical documents were a constant reminder of how much I dread reading technical instructions. I will admit I usually take a stab at a product and if necessary then consult the technical document only to find myself more frustrated. So the idea of learning about these is a little enthralling, a little… Once again we refer back to many of our readings of how important it is to cater to your audience. If you don’t put yourself in their shoes, your document is probably only really catered to you and ultimately sucks like most technical documents.

While starting the Instructions Project, I realized what an important role technical instructions play in our lives. Stop signs, the signs telling you which window to pull up to at the drive through are just a few examples of how we don't even notice most instructions in our lives. However, what if you have never worked a fire extiguisher before and needed to? What if you actually needed to know how to put on the oxygen masks on a plane? These are dramatic examples of how concise, easy to follow instructions are extremely important to us.