Service, or A good topic for Christmas

In the technical writing course I wrote for Learning Tree I steadfastly avoid providing a definition for technical writing. Instead, we provide a purpose for technical writing: "technical writing helps people to do things or to make a decision". Concentrating on the 'why' helps clarify what matters in technical writing: the audience, the people you're serving.

One of my sons (Jason) brought up an example when he was home for Christmas: He's preparing a pamphlet on tracheotomy. The hospital where he works currently has a pamphlet on the topic but it's aimed at people who are going home with a tube in their throats and focuses on how the patient (or the patient's caregivers) should care for the equipment. As a nurse, Jason recognized that this pamphlet was unhelpful for his audience. Jason's audience wanted to know what having a trache meant to the patient's prognosis, what the patient can/can't do, what will happen next, what the patient will/won't be able to do then. Jason's proposed pamphlet serves that audience.

Poor technical writers serve themselves. Great technical writers serve others.


Reading or read

• Visionaire No. 55: Surprise by Steven Klein, Sophie Calle, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Andreas Gursky
• The Wasp Factory: A Novel by Iain Banks
• Titus: The Illustrated Screenplay by Julie Taymor, William Shakespeare, and Jonathan Bate
• Inventions by Leonardo da Vinci
• The King's English by Betsy Burton
• The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume I: Basic Forms: How to Make Pop-Ups Step-by-Step by Carol Barton
• An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in the Smithsonian Libraries by Mary Augusta Thomas