BASICS OF TECHINICAL ENGLISH CODE 6465

1. UNIT NO.5
TECHNICAL WRITING PROCESS
PRESENTED BY
ZAHID MEHMOOD
PH D SCHOLAR
NAROWAL

2. OBJECTIVES
 After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 Outline the format
 write the rough draft
 revise the draft
 organize and develop the writing
 discuss before writing techniques.

3. THINK AND PREPARE BEFORE WRITE
 Establish your writing objective.
 Identify your readers.
 Determine the scope of your writing project.
 Perform the necessary research.

4. IDENTIFY READERS
• READERS NEED
• READERS KNOWLEDGE
• USE OF JARGON
• USE OF TERMINOLOGY
 Are Your Primary Readers Technical?
 Are Your Primary Readers Managerial?
 Are Your Readers Primarily General-interest
Readers?

5. DETERMINE THE SCOPE OF THE WRITING
 Research
 The following are typical examples of primary
research:
 Experiments
 Mail questionnaires
 Personal interviews
 Telephone interviews
 Personal observation/experience

6. THE FOLLOWING ARE TYPICAL EXAMPLES OF
SECONDARY RESEARCH:
 Books
 Periodicals
 Newspapers
 Government documents
 Industrial and trade directories
 Published results of experiments

7. ORGANIZING AND DEVELOPING YOUR
WRITING
• GENERAL TO SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENT
• SPECIFIC TO GENERAL DEVELOPMENT
• CHRONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

8. SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT
This development method relates to the position and space
that physical elements occupy. This type of development is
crucial in the description of mechanisms and how their
parts interrelate and operate.
• SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT IN TECHNICAL WRITING
 It forces parallel structure of your ideas.
 It allows for easy evaluation of your organization and
development.
 It shows you completeness.
 It saves you time.

9. THE VALUE OF OUTLINING
AN OUTLINE HAS MUCH THE SAME USE TO THE TECHNICAL
WRITER THAT A MAP HAS TO THE SERIOUS TRAVELER
 Outlining Forces Parallel Structure Of Your Ideas
 Outlining Shows You Completeness
 Outlining Saves You Time
 Outline Formats
 Simple list
 for all brief and simple written communications, such as
memos and brief letters

10. ACADEMIC OUTLINE
ACADEMIC OUTLINE IS ONE OF TWO TYPES OF FORMAL OUTLINE
FORMATS. THIS PARTICULAR TYPE IS CALLED "ACADEMIC" MAINLY
BECAUSE IT IS THE KIND OF OUTLINE FORMAT MOST COMMONLY
TAUGHT IN HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. IT USES A COMBINATION
OF ROMAN NUMERALS, ARABIC NUMERALS, AND UPPERCASE AND
LOWERCASE ENGLISH LETTERS.
 Engineering outline
 The engineering outline is also frequently referred to as a
decimal outline because of the decimal points that
separate each entry.

11. THE THREE BASIC OUTLINE STYLES
 Topical Outline
 A topical outline uses only topic headings or short
phrases for each outline entry.
 Sentence Outline
 A sentence outline has each entry in the form of a
complete sentence.
 Paragraph Outline
 The paragraph outline has all the main entries
summarized with a complete paragraph

12. THE ROUGH DRAFT
THE FIRST DRAFT YOU WRITE IS THE ROUGH DRAFT.
THIS IS THE ONLY DRAFT THAT YOU WRITE WITHOUT
THE HELP OF REVISION.
 How to Write a Rough Draft
 The only thing you are striving to do at this point is to turn
the outline into prose
 Speed is essential. Don't labor over the writing
 Don't stop to correct
 The Rough Draft Cures Writer's Block
 Revision

13. ACTIVATE THE LANGUAGE
ACTIVE, LIVELY WRITING IS AT THE CORE OF INTEREST AND
UNDERSTANDING. THE CENTRAL ELEMENT TO ACTIVE WRITTEN
LANGUAGE IS YOUR USE OF VERBS. IN TECHNICAL WRITING,
YOUR VERBS MUST SHOW ACTION AND LIFE
 There are two main elements involved in activating
language:
 Check active voice and passive voice.
 Activate suppressed verbs.
Clarify the Writing
 Decide on personal versus impersonal reference
 Determine whether jargon is helpful.
 Change abstract words to concrete words.
 Eliminate affected language.
 Replace clichés and trite language.
 Correct misplaced modifiers.

14. SIMPLIFY THE WRITING
 Keep down sentence length.
 Keep down word length.
 Eliminate needless words.
 Simplify positive and negative constructions
 Eliminate Needless Words

15. THE FINAL DRAFT
 There are five basic steps that you must always
take to ensure the attractiveness and sense of
professionalism your technical writing deserves:
 Allow for generous use of white space.
 Use topic heads often.
 Use listing.
 Use illustrations effectively.
 Include adequate appendixes.

16. CONCLUSION
 Technical writing process helps in effective
communication between writer and reader. For this
purpose there is a need to create a document that
is appropriate and helpful. Such document
facilitates the audience to find that they need. They
are able to understand what they find. On the basis
of that understanding they can use it properly. In
order to achieve these objectives, one has to follow
a process that has been discussed in this unit

17. ANY QUESTIONS