Technical Writing and Technical Writers Note: This explanation of what technical writing consists of will help my audience understand why this portfolio has to exhibit a variety of skills; all of the skills presented are relevant to technical writing. As a professional and technical writer, this portfolio must show skills that are instrumental to both writing genres (business and technical). Technical writing or technical communication is a field that consists of a communicator conveying clear and concise messages to an audience through a medium. These messages can be conveyed through text and/or graphics via print or digital mediums. To effectively communicate messages, there has to be knowledge of composition, language, technical communication, and rhetorical theories and connecting those theories to practices. Usability testing often provides insight into user thought processes relating to user practices for communicators. The communicator must have the ability to analyze various contexts, communication theories, and audience practices to make sense of rhetorical situations and construct the most effective documents. Knowing design and usability concepts is important in producing clear, effective, and usable information. When communicators mis-analyze document or graphic design choices while developing information, users misinterpret the text or graphics relating to the text. This often results in unusable documents and sometimes unusable products; users can't determine how to use the products because of poor documentation. For the companies producing the products, the results are wasted money and efforts and sometimes a bad reputation. Technical communicators are people who create, research, analyze, and distribute information. The goal is to convey information that a reader can understand and act upon; therefore, whenever a person prepares a document that will serve as a basis for action, that person is working as a technical communicator. Whenever a group of people has specialized knowledge that another group does not have, the technical writer serves as the go-between. Technical communicators don't just translate but also generate truth by choosing what gets written and for whom, knowing that the readers will depend on the accuracy of the written document. Even though technical writers are expected to have some knowledge of the subjects they write about, experts usually provide detailed information. The writers mainly serve as editors by organizing the information, putting the information in user-friendly language, selecting graphics, writing sidebars, and imposing a consistent format for usability. When writers are required to write content, research is usually required to obtain expert knowledge. The difference in technical writing and professional (business) writing is that technical writing helps users solve problems with technologies and technical subject matter; professional writing is grounded in the communication needs of organizations, the daily need for clear communication both inside and outside of corporations ("Definitions of," n.d.). Common Tasks
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