Objectives of Technical Writing 1. Clarity.

To make your documents clear:

Provide specific detail Answer the reporter's questions Use easily understandable words Use verbs in the active voice

2. Conciseness. To save your writer's time:

Limit paragraph length Limit word and sentence length ** Avoid a high fog index o Use meat cleaver method of revision o Avoid shun words o Avoid camouflaged words o Avoid the expletive pattern o Omit redundancies o Avoid wordy phrases

3. Accuracy. To avoid grammatical errors follow proofreading tips:

Let someone else read it Let the document sit before proofreading Read backwards Read one line at a time Read long words syllable by syllable Use computer spell checks Check figures, scientific and technical equations, and abbreviations Read it aloud Use a dictionary

4. Organization. To guide your reader, use organizational strategies:

Spatial Chronological Importance Comparison/Contrast Problem/Solution

5. Ethics. To be a responsible technical writer:

Check your actions against legal, practical, and ethical concerns

Follow strategies for making ethical decisions: define the problem, determine your audience, maximize values and minimize problems, consider the big picture, and write your text