English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week’s reading from Technical Communications Today, entitled Organization and Drafting, focuses on the various aspects of organization that go into constructing a well-planned technical document. The author goes beyond the simple introduction, body, and conclusion layout and presents several genres available to the reader, each offering a different method of presenting information to an audience. In constructing large technical documents, the text makes the recommendation of creating an informal outline to guide one’s work. I found this section pretty interesting. Typically, I hate constructing outlines of any sort, but I never considered developing one using presentational software. I think this method would offer an ideal way for me to organize and clarify my thoughts in the future, and would definitely cut down on actual writing and editing time.
Another aspect that I found very interesting was the discussion on forming a proper introduction. I was surprised by the text’s commentary on where to begin a technical paper and how, often, the introduction may be the worst place! The author explained this by noting that the introduction is, arguably, the most important part of the document because it’s where the reader’s attention is either grabbed or not. In the past, I’ve always started my papers with the introduction, and have often struggled. I think I will reconsider this advice from now on, and focus on the main body before developing an introduction or conclusion. On top of this, I also took a lot of interest in the concept of visualizing the document from the audience’s perspective. In doing this, the writer is much more able to understand what information the reader is looking for, and what questions he or she is expecting to get answered. I believe that when taking on this perspective, the construction of the entire document, most notably the introduction and conclusion, become much more simple to outline and ultimately compile.