After reading Chapter 3, Readers and Context of Use, the book discusses the importance of profiling your audience and describing their needs, values, and attitudes. In preparation of identifying your readers, the chapter goes in detail of how using a Reader Chart will help you understand the various people who’s reading your document. In addition, the book deals with profiling the context of use which can strongly influence how your audience will interpret what message you’re trying to convey.
I thought the chapter did a great job in demonstrating examples in profiling your readers and types of audience. The step by step break down of the memo from Donald Rumsfeld makes it easy to understand and follow to the techniques used. Another excellence example the book uses is talk about when you are developing a reader profile. I thought this specific section was very interesting. It said that readers are “raiders” for information and most readers are raiding your document for information. I found this guideline to be valuable information to think about when writing a technical document.
The chapter later discusses profiling readers with search engines. The section is very vital in how you can gain a better understanding of your audience by using a search engines such as Google, Altavista, and Yahoo. In using the search engine for profiling your readers, you can use symbols and strategies to help find what exactly you need. I thought it was interesting how putting a +, - , and “ “ can refine your search to explicitly what you were searching.
International and Cross-Cultural Communication section of this chapter helps in how to communication with people from another culture. It’s very insightful how common used terms and document styles can be a different meaning in another culture. Although I think some of the technical communication skills they are applying towards cross-cultural communication are very similar to our cultural standards.
Search Engine Tools
I also found the section on search engine tools to be very informative. It's amazing how many people are unfamiliar with these symbols and their functions, but I can understand how this could have happened because I've personally never been in a class where these tools have been presented or discussed. Over the years, I've come across the +, -, and quotations on the internet, but the wildcard symbols were definitely new to me and they seem to be extremely useful (for instance, maybe in finding the name of a song for which you only know a handful of lyrics). These search tools should also be used in technical writing because it is important to consider those who will be searching for information in the future. If your writing style reflects that of Shakespeare, then it's unlikely that any search engine will include your work in its results when somebody wants to find out how a refrigerator works.
Re: Search Engine Tools
I also found this section to be interesting even though its outdated. While all the information on the syntax for performing boolean searches is correct, more and more of it is automatically done for you by Google. Plus signs are automatically added for you in the background for all terms, and unspecific words such as "it" and "and" are removed before the search is done. Wildcard symbols aren't necessary unless using quotes to find a particular phrase of words. Still, knowing how to use searches effectively is important for finding information in any context. I do agree however that its important to consider who will be reading your documents in the future. With the shift in software applications on your computer, to software as a service offered on the web (example: google docs), more and more technical writing will be stored and thus indexed by search engines on the web.
Comment of search symbos
Reading through this response I realized that I was thinking the same thing while reading the book and writing my own response. Understanding the use of the +, –, and “” symbols can effectively increase searching results for the document or facts that you trying to filter unwanted material and specify the material that you are searching for. I find that after reading this chapter it was like having a refresher on searching. Usually I don’t use symbols while searching; I just type in a phrase or a couple of key words on Google and go from there. I am going to apply symbols in my future searches.
Zebulon Rouse
Search
What Jack was saying though is that for the most part those symbols are necessary any more. For example a search for 'dog cat' returns the same number of results as 'dog+cat'. However you can still use the wild card symbol (*) and quotes (") to better refine or extend what you are searching for. Using the earlier example 'dog*cat' returns almost twice as many results as 'dog cat' while ' "dog cat" ' returns about a fourth of the results of 'dog cat'. So while a few of the things the book showed are still useful most have been made irrelevant by being integrated into how search engines work.
Andy
Andy
What's the point?
I’ve find it very interesting that the Google search engine uses the symbol character to refine your search database. I’ve never actually never knew about this feature in the search engine until reading upon it in this chapter. While wanting to narrow down a search, I’ve always just used the “I’m Feeling Lucky” or “Advance Search” button. While performing a Google search engine task, I just do not think applying a symbol character function in your search would save you any time. In comparison to the “Advance Search” they both do the same process in narrowing your search. The “Advance Search” has a few extra components where it allows the users to adjust your tool setting.