Lesson One

These concepts will be at the heart of all of the writing assignments you will do for this course. To get started in the course, you are asked to share your past experiences with these important concepts in your conference responses for this week.

In Chapter One, Markel defines technical communication as the process of "creating, shaping, and communicating technical information so that people can use it safely, effectively, and efficiently" (4). In his definition, the emphasis is on passing along information to help someone understand and perform a task.

He finds that technical communication is produced by two categories of people: technical professionals and technical communicators (4). Technical professionals such as engineers and mangers of technical projects spend increasing amounts of time as communicators as they advance in their professions. Technical communicators include technical writers and editors as well as others responsible for producing technical documents, including those who have job titles such as Web master or documentation specialist.

Markel identifies seven major characteristics of a technical document: "[Technical communication] addresses particular readers, helps those readers solve problems, reflects an organization's goals and culture, is produced collaboratively, uses design to increase readability, consists of words or graphics or both, and is produced using high-tech tools"(6).

He concludes the chapter by defining "eight measurers of excellence in technical communication": "honesty, clarity, accuracy, comprehensivness, accessibility, conciseness, professional appearance, and correctness" (10). John Langan, another textbook author, stresses efficiency as the hallmark of effective technical communication in Technical Communication, 9th ed.. He says that a good document should require little work on the user's part in order to get a maximum benefit from the document.

Chapter 5: Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose

In Chapter 5, Markel stresses that the shape of every technical document--the content and the form of the document--is determined by the audience and purpose for the document. In this chapter, Markel guides the user in analyzing audience and purpose.

First he classifies the audience for a document into two categories of readers. The first is the "primary audience," the readers "who will have a direct role in responding to your document" (75). The second category is the "secondary audience," which consists of people who will not directly respond to your document but will use the document to stay abreast of events. This secondary audience may also use a portion of the document in a specialized way, such as referring to an appendix for technical information not included in the body of a report.

Markel classifies all readers into four basic categories: expert, technician, manager, and general reader. He then offers suggestions for writing for each category. Please see the guidelines on page 81 for an important and useful summary of information on this topic.

Markel identifies basic characteristics that a technical communicator should consider about a given audience when planning a document. These characteristics include education, professional experience, job responsibility, personal characteristics, personal preferences, cultural characteristics, attitude toward you, attitude toward the subject, expectations about the document, reason for reading the document, method of reading the document, the person's reading skill, and the physical environment in which the reader will read the document (83).

On page 88, the author provides an example of an Audience Profile Sheet used to analyze the primary audience for a particular document. You will find a file for this form at TechComm Web under Forms for Technical Communication. You will need this form to complete Assignment One: Audience Analysis, which is an analysis of the audience for your class project for the course. The audience analysis is due on November 21 . See the Syllabus, Project Descriptions, Class Project for information about choosing a topic for the class project. See the Syllabus, Project Descriptions, Assignment One: Audience Analysis for a description of the assignment. See the Student Assignment Folder to submit the assignment.

The last section of Chapter Five on audience is a discussion of the cultural variables to consider when analyzing a multicultural audience. This section will be the subject of Lesson Two for next week.

Markel concludes the chapter by providing help in stating the purpose of your document. He suggests asking what you want the document to accomplish and then thinking of a verb to convey your purpose. He has a list of verbs to use when you want to communicate information such as describe or explain and a list of verbs to use when you want to convince such as propose or evaluate (96).

The Copyright Law

The final topic for Lesson One is information about the copyright law. Please see the conference topics for this lesson for links to additional articles on this important topic. As a technical communicator, you have a legal obligation to your employer to make sure that you do not violate the copyright law in producing documents such as manuals and Web sites. As a student, you have an obligation to make sure that you do not commit an act of plagiarism in the assignments you produce for the class.

For additional information on the basic concepts of technical communication, including additional information on defining the primary and secondary audience for a document, see Module 1: Understanding the Basic Concepts of Technical Writing.