Processes and GuidelinesWriting Process: from Audience to Rough Draft:

1. Finding a Topic

2. Analyzing audience and purpose

3. Narrowing down your topic

4. Outlining your report

5. Arranging the parts of the outline

6. Writing a rough draft and comparing it to the outline

7. Revising the rough draft.

Task Analysis

• The job of the technical writer is to create information for products that help users use products. The goal is not simply to describe how the product works.

• When you write instructions, procedures, and "guide" or user-guide information, you normally must use a task approach. That means providing steps and explanations for all the major tasks that users may need to perform.

Strategies for Peer-Reviewing and Team-Writing

Strategies for Peer-Reviewing• Initial meeting• Peer-reviewing strategies• Peer-review summary

Strategies for Team-Writing• Assembling the team• Planning the project• Scheduling the project• Balancing workload• Setting up a style guide or style sheet• Reviewing drafts and finishing

Different Approaches to Documentation

1. Writing with a function orientation:It explains each function, feature, or interface element of a product.If this approach shows up in user guides. It is meant for nontechnical readers — perhaps because the writers are inexperienced, untrained, or technical.

2. Writing with a task orientation:1. Identify the tasks users will need to perform

with the product.2. structure your document accordingly. 3. Make your headings and subheadings task

oriented in their phrasing. like "How to adjust the volume, "Adjusting the volume," or "Adjust the volume." It does not mean phrasing like "Volume" or "Volume Adjustment."

Stronger transitions and overviews:• Repetition of key words• Arrangement of key words• Transition words and phrases• Reviews of topics covered and topics to be

covered

Power Revision Techniques

• How you organize your writing, and how you link it all up together. This means:

Looking for potential problems and then fixing those problems

• There are:• structure-level revisions• Sentence-level revisions

structure-level revisions

• Checking contents• Checking organization• Strengthening topic sentences • Strengthening transitions• Checking paragraph length and contents

Sentence-level revisions

• Revising weak be-verbs• Revising noun stacks• Revising redundant phrasing• Revising weak expletives• Revising weak passive-voice sentences• Revising subject-verb mismatches• Revising sentence-length problems

Libraries, Documentation, Cross Reference

Libraries• Library Requirement• Descriptors and Keywords• Finding Information Sources• Internet Resources• Books• Magazine and Journal Articles• Reference books--handbooks, guides, atlases,

dictionaries, yearbooks

Documentation

• Document your citations• Make your work legal

• Use:• The number system (Scientific

documentation)

Cross References

• Point readers to other places in the same document or to other information sources where related information can be found.

A cross-reference consists of:• Name of the source being referenced• Page number• Subject matter of the cross-reference

Types of cross-reference

• Internal cross-reference:• Refers to some other part of the same

document.

• External cross-reference:• Refers to information outside of the current

document