Technical Communication Is About Addressing Your Audience

It is about the process of creating, designing,and transmitting technical information so that it is easily understood allowing things to be accomplished more safely, effectively and efficiently.

Most technical communication is done by people working in or for industry, government, and private organizations. The users are people who need it for their work or to solve problems related to their work.

Technical communicators, also sometimes referred to as technical writers, gather information from existing documentation, outside sources like the Internet, competitors, and from subject matter experts.

A SME (subject matter expert) is anyone who has the intimate or the required information about something which the writer needs for his project.

The gathered information helps translate the sometimes very complex technical concepts helping specific user or users to perform tasks in specific ways.

The technical writer has to be very aware of his or her intended audience therefore, careful audience analysis is a must allowing for effective and quality documents crafted to the audience's exact requirements.

Only someone that has been specifically trained as a technical writer at community colleges, technical colleges or schools or universities has the required skills to produce quality work.

Effective communication requires the skills in quality content, language, format, style, graphics, document project management etc.

Technical communication output always has to be accurate. Substandard work causes the readers to act improperly or do something incorrectly. Mistakes or damage to their work environment, equipment, or themselves is the result. Another issue it triggers is liability.

Much of about what we read every day is technical communication. The factual information contained in our textbooks, phone books, cookbooks, procedures manuals, at the office, engineering reports, journal articles, speeches by government officials and even the owner's manual for our car is technical communication.

A combination of words and graphics contained in such documents help communication with the intended audience to understand about a subject or to carry out a task.

Technical writing is a specialized, structured way of writing that presents information in a manner that best suits cognitive and psychological needs of the readers.

This allows them to respond as intended achieving the purpose required. Although, writing is mostly for educational purposes, it can be also used to persuade, and in fact it sometimes overlaps with advertising or marketing.

Technical writing is formatted and shaped to make reading (and understanding) simple, poignant, unequivocal, and enjoyable in other words "user friendly".

The competent technical writer always asks himself three simple questions:

• What does the audience know?
• What do they need to know?
• What is the best way to provide that information to them in a fast, accurate and efficient way?

The people who create technical communication or writing comprise of two categories of people.

The first, comes from the ranks of engineers, scientists, business people and other technically oriented individuals.

These are usually engaged by their job or business or are required to write by their employers in order to save the company some money.

The second type of writer, are specifically trained as a technical writers at the community colleges, technical schools or universities.

They are hired as an employee by a firm or taken on as a "contractor" or temporary technical help to supplement "in-house" writers when conditions require.

Today, technical writing positions require people who can write effective end-user manuals, system design documents, Web sites, and other documents for engineering and IT firms.

An experienced technical writer has this ability because he or she is trained to produce almost any sort of textual and or visual material that is required by business, industry or government.

What knowledge the technical writer lacks about new software or equipment he learns quickly. Our rapidly evolving information age requires technical communications people that are adaptable.

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