Chapter three in the reading titled Readers and Context of Use teaches us as writers how to reach out and be specific to the audience we intend to speak to. What I learned in this reading is that in order for you to be a good technical writer you need to be familiar with the audience you intend to reach. You need to know the profiles of the people you are speaking to. You also need to keep in mind the ethnic or cultural background of the audience because many different cultures have different ways of reading and writing. Another thing you need to keep in mind is the contexts in which the writing will be read.
If you are familiar with the audience you can find much more specific information which is better than generalized information because that is what technical writing is all about. You want to be as short and to the point as possible so you don’t lose the attention of your reader and convey the proper information to such reader. In order to be specific you need to develop a profile of your reader which answers the questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. You need to keep in mind that most technical writing is not read for pleasure but for necessity.
Ethnic and cultural background of people tends to affect the way they interpret what they read. For instance some countries read from right to left instead left to right like we do. This could cause great confusion if you were writing to an international party and did not recognize that fact. There is also that language barrier that people have struggled with since the beginning of time. If you do not write in a language that people can read what’s the point? When writing to people within other cultures you need to make sure to be clear on what you say because things that may be common sense to us can be hard to understand or even insulting to other people.
The context in which something is read can also be misleading. There are four main types of context you need to keep into mind. These are: physical, ethical, economic, and political. To help you with this problem you may want to fill out a context chart before you write your piece. This can help clear up any context questions regarding your work.
This article helped me clear up some of the thoughts I had about technical writing. It showed me that it’s not about how much you write but what you write about. Technical writing is all about being as specific as possible and making sure to keep the interest of the reader and answer any and all questions the readers may have. If you follow the details shown in this reading it will help you become a more successful technical writer.
Instructor Feedback
Bobby,
We won't reply to all of your Reading Responses, but we think it's important to discuss your first one so that you know if you're on the right track.
In general, you have a provided a good summary of the reading material, but to get full credit you must provide commentary that connects the material with a larger context and shows how it may be
put to use. We want to see you really incorporate the reading into your thinking about technical writing, and the best way to do that is to think of the Reading Response as less a summary than a description of how you will use the reading or how the reading as change your thinking. Keep in mind these bullet points from our "Principles for Reading Responses" handout:
communicating in other contexts.
Remember that we all have read the chapter (at least we sure hope we have), so we don't need much summary. What we need is your understanding of how to put the information in motion: What can we do with it? How does it connect to other material inside or outside of
class? How does it help us with our current project?
Also, make sure to be specific in your comments. You write: "Another thing you need to keep in mind is the contexts in which the writing will be read. If you are familiar with the audience you can find much more specific information which is better than generalized information because that is what technical writing is all about." However, you don't identify which contexts technical writing is likely to appear (or has appeared in your experience). You could also go into more detail about when and where and why specific information is better than generalized information (or when, perhaps, the opposite maybe true). You really want to get into the nuts and bolts of how audiences and contexts shape documents, so that means identifying specifics.
Overall, I think your first response is a great start. To get maximum credit going forward, do these things:
effects.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact me through nrivers@purdue.edu.