by SEG

Created on: July 23, 2011

Technical communications are visual and oral presentations or written documents that are sharply focused economically composed communications that hold the attention of a specific target audience; enabling them to understand and use technologies, processes and concepts that were previously unfamiliar to them.  (Alred, G.J. et al, 2009). 

Presentations (such as Power Point) are visual/oral communications directed at specific audiences; to special interest groups and assemblies of business people or engineers as an example.   These technical communications are designed to capture and hold the attention of the listeners while conveying brief and concise yet visually and intellectually complete and clearly understandable information.   The purpose of these forms of technical communications is to convince the target audience of the soundness and desirability of some new course of action, process, concept, technology or product.

Technical Writing is another form of technical communications that is clearly different from the academic-educational writing we’re all familiar with.  The academic writing in books and essays, research and technical articles or papers that broadly educate and inform us do not employ the crisp, concise forms of information transmission that is the hallmark of the Technical Writing we all know about and even use sometimes: did you read the instructions the last time you purchased a new product?

Procedural Technical Writing instructs us as we learn how to actually ‘do’ something new.  Whether assembling a new bicycle, using a new computer or vacuum cleaner or simply knowing how to launder a new article of clothing, every time we “read the instructions” it is a technical writer (or a team of writers) briefly communicating with and teaching a non-technical audience how to understand, use and maintain a new consumer product.

Such lucid yet plain writing also meets an ethical need because technical writers often teach unsophisticated consumers and employees how to handle hazardous materials and operate potentially dangerous machinery.  Personal safety in the home and on the job requires the thorough familiarity that is the technical writer’s responsibility to deliver: primary information in a plain and brief, yet efficient and thorough package.  (Alred, G.J. et al, 2009)

And all of those inserts that fall out of the Sunday paper onto the living room floor every

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