This document discusses technical communication in the workplace. It notes that writing is an important skill for career advancement. Technical communication focuses on communicating information about business and industry products and services primarily through workplace documents like memos, instructions, and presentations. The intended audiences for technical communication include internal colleagues as well as external customers and clients. The reading level of many workplace documents should match the average 8th to 9th grade level of most US adults. Technical writers should aim for clarity, conciseness, and ease of understanding in their documents.

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2.  Writing is a fundamental professional skill...in today's
workplace writing is a 'threshold skill' for hiring and
promotion among salaried...employees. Survey results
indicate that writing is a ticket to professional opportunity,
while poorly written job applications are a figurative kiss
of death.
~Gaston Caperton, president of the
National Commission on Writing for
America's Families, Schools, and
Colleges

3.  Technical Communication is oral and written
communication for and about business and industry.
 It focuses on products and services – how to
manufacture, market, manage, deliver, and best use them.
 Technical communication is
composed primarily in the
workplace for
supervisors, colleagues, s
ubordinates, vend
ors, and customers.

4.  Routine Correspondence
o Memos, Letters, E-Mails, Messages, Instant Messages, and Text
Messages
 Technical Descriptions and Process Analyses
 Instructions, User Manuals, and Standard Operating
Procedures
 Proposals
 Executive Summaries
 Informal and Formal Reports
 Presentations
 Brochures, Newsletters, and Web sites

5.  Business offers a unique perspective on audience:
 Internal Audience = those persons within the company
 External Audience = those persons outside the company
 High-Tech Audience = includes those who work in your field of
expertise, are your colleagues because they share your
educational background, work experience, or level of
understanding
 Low-Tech Audience = includes coworkers in other departments,
bosses, subordinates, or colleagues who work for other
companies but do not share the same level of understanding
about a particular topic
 Lay Audience = customers and clients who neither work for your
company nor have any knowledge about your field of expertise

6.  The 1993 National Assessment of Adult
Literacy places the average reading level of
US adults at 8th – 9th grade level.
 Their 2003 Assessment indicates that those
numbers barely moved.
 6th Grade = Comics
 7th Grade = Modern Romances
 8th Grade = Ladies’ Home Journal, Wall Street Journal
 9th Grade = Good Housekeeping
 10th Grade = Reader’s Digest, US News and World Report
 11th Grade = Time and Newsweek
 12th Grade = Atlantic Monthly
 In a survey conducted by ACT, just 51% of students
demonstrated the ability to read at a freshman level.
 No popular magazines or newspapers score high enough on
language content to meet college graduate level.

7.  The National Center for Education Statistics
demonstrates the comparison between their 1992 and
2003 statistics.
Average Prose, Document and Prose Literacy by Educational
Quantative Attainment
Literacy Scores of Adults: 1992
and 2003

8.  Every discipline has a preferred writing style.
 Write for Clarity.
 Provide specific detail with fewer words.
 Answer the Reporter’s Questions.
 Use easily understandable words.
 Avoid wordiness, obscure words, define acronyms,
abbreviations, and jargon
 Use verbs in the active voice rather
than the passive voice
 Avoid Sexist or Regional Language

9.  Write for Conciseness.
 Simplify words, sentences, and paragraphs
 Limit paragraph length to four to six typed lines, or no
more than 50 words.
 Limit word and sentence length.
 Approximately 15 words per sentence and no more than
5 multisyllabic words per 100 words of text.
 Avoid camouflaged words: make an adjustment to =
adjust
 Avoid the Expletive Patterns: there and it
 Omit Redundancies
 Avoid Wordy Phrases