Chapter 15
Jeff Feeder
Creating Technical Descriptions
Objectives and Outcomes
- Understand that technical descriptions can be used to organize specific details about objects, substances, mechanisms, organisms, systems, and locations for an identified audience.
- Physical characteristics, answering questions you expect your readers to have about appearance, acceptability, and impact.
- Use technical descriptions in observation notes, manuals and training materials, proposals and reports, marketing and promotional materials, and public information and education.
- Prepare technical descriptions:
- meet audience needs by answering their questions
- partition your subject into structural parts and/or functional parts
- Adjust diction to audience need, choosing accurate terms, and using appropriate metaphors
- Choose from a variety of visuals: photographs or realistic drawings, topographic and contour maps, phantom views, overlays, schematics and wiring diagrams, cross-section maps, exploded views, blueprints
- Typically use spatial order to give a clear view of appearance and structure
Defining Technical Description
Descriptions summarize physical characteristics, answering questions you expect your readers to have, examples are:
- What is it? How is it defined? By whom?
- What is its purpose? What is its importance or impact?
These questions get answered depending on the depth of the detail required. Sometimes technical description constitutes an entire document, oral presentation, or visual. Descriptions can very in length depending on the report written/given. Many descriptors show up in articles in smaller print near pictures or along the side of the article to explain something.
Using Technical Description
You can decide whether to include a description and what kind of details to incorporate by examining the context, purpose, and task of your document. Common applications for technical descriptions include:
Observation Notes – Many situations require accurate first-hand descriptions, particularly in medicine, field study, and scientific research. The notes may be extended or transcribed so others can read them or used for a formal document.
Training Materials – New employees may need descriptive overviews of the tools and machines they will use. Description can explain how it’s used, why it is used or what special features make it important.
Technical Manuals – A descriptor that introduces the reader to the machine, system or tool they may be using, giving visuals and descriptors of all parts and subparts.
Proposals and Reports – Descriptors should be used if it helps the audience understand and approve a proposal. Specifications on equipment or the capabilities may be necessary.
Marketing and Promotional Pieces – Materials or both informative and persuasive with positive terms within it. Specifications and detailed pictures are usually on a specification sheet with brief important information up front.
Public Information and Education – Magazines, newspapers or websites have substantial amount of description to let the reader know what its value is so to want to read it. Items that will catch the reader’s eye.
Preparing a Technical Description
Audience’s Task – Technical description should address the intended audience. Select information that responds to the audience’s probable questions. Identifying the audience helps decide on crucial aspects of the description as components, diction, visuals, and format.
Components – Separated into structural and functional parts. Structural parts comprise the physical aspects of the device, without regard to purpose such as a house key. Functional parts perform clearly defined tasks in the operation of the device, like a key may have multiple functional parts.
Diction – A form of technical description that is precise.
- Audience-appropriate Terms – An audience of non-experts need details but not extraordinary detail. Experts on the other hand need more precise detail on the information presented.
- Accurate Terms – To ensure precision use the most accurate terms available. An example is the differentiation between two and three dimensional objects. Mistakes in accuracy put the audience in total confusion.
- Figurative Language – Such as metaphors, similes, and analogies would give readers a clearer description. Comparing a small item to a larger item is an example of figurative language.
Visuals – Visuals enable the audience to form a mental image of the subject being described. Visuals should be labeled and described if needed. Visuals can go from 2D all the way to 3D, from lines to actual warped surfaces or 3 dimensional surfaces. Visual can be used to illustrate the exterior, the interior and individual components.
Organization – When preparing a technical description, you have to make decisions about the sequence of information. Organization could be spatial, chronological, or priority order.
Introductions of a descriptor should include:
- Background information such as what is the history? Or what are current developments?
- Parts-whole relationships like where does the object fir in relation to similar ones?
- Qualitative distinctions such as what separates it from similar objects?
Body of technical descriptor includes:
- Part-by-part description arranged in order of location, assembly or importance.
- Information is specific to the audience.
Conclusion of technical descriptor includes:
- Explains how the parts fit and function together.
- Applications: how is it used?
- Anecdotes or brief narratives: Who uses it?
- Advantages/disadvantages: What are the benefits and/or problems?
25 comments:
Chapter 15 does a very good job describing what to do when creating a technical description, I could be using most of these tips when creating the OLPC documentation for our project in this class. We are creating a technical description on how to use a certain program in the XO laptop. This chapter was very helpful to me by explaining some things that our group should possibly include in the creation of the document.
I use technical descriptions in my chem labs every week. A lot of what we do in lab requires us to make observations and record them. Typically, changes of a reaction occur insanely fast so having to write down what we witnessed is usually in short hand. To someone who is not scientifically inclined, you would just look at it and assume a three year old wrote it because it looks like jibberish. Some lab profs require you to rewrite your lab reports to extend your short hand while others just have you make a legend for your observation notes.
When reading about chapter 15, I related it a lot to labs in chemistry and biology. Many times when in lab, we have to put numbers into equations or we have to write observations or write about our hypothesis. Many times people have to do the experiment over and over to make sure it is accurate. People can use these experiments in proposals and reports. This can help people understand the importance of the experiment or can help people learn more about the experiment.
After going through this chapter it taught me alot about technical definitions. It is way more complex than I would have ever thought, and alot of questions and many different aspects of thought go into it to create a thorough definition. By making a defintion like this, it makes it clear to the audience so that they are not confused in any way. A good example of all this is when people use sarcasm or something you are not sure if they are serious or not but by describing it more or using symbols you explain it better.
I have never given much thought to how important descriptions can be. I was a dental assistant for a few years. The dentist and I had the responsibility of charting any and all information about our patients after their visit. We had to be very careful about the way we wrote out information because at any given time, another dentist, a dental hygienist, or a specialist could look at a patient’s record and determine their treatment by what we wrote in that chart. It would be pretty traumatic for a patient to go through a procedure that was unnecessary due to an error in our description. I am no longer a dental assistant, but I know that it will be necessary as a dietician to document information about my clients. I think the information given in this chapter will help me do that in a much more efficient manner.
Technical Descriptions are very important especially in the construction industry. if you are building something you need to have techical detailed instructions otherwise the thing you are building will not look like it is supposed to. With good technical directions most people are able to build furniture or other objects that require some assembly after purchase. When giving a presentation I usually prefer to use short technical descriptions and data instead of long wording because no one wants to read all of that.
This chapter discussed the importance of descriptions. I am currently going to college to be a clinical dietician, and as a clinical dietician I will have to chart my patients on a regular basis. This will involve any lab work done on them and any observations that I have made while analyzing them. I will also be doing a lot of reading charts that doctors have made for the patient. It will be important for me to look at their charts and work with the medications they are on and their symptoms and what they are hoping to improve, I have to hope the doctors have charted there information accurately.
Chapter 15 was about technical descriptions and understanding when to use specific information. I know when you start a new job you will get a technical description of what you will be doing on your job. For me I work at a daycare and in the infant room there is a technical description of what the babies are eating for breakfast each day and how to prepare their bottles and food amounts. Also there are manuals on each of the babies diapers that show a picture of how to put it on the right way in case parents are unaware of it. I think a lot of products have technical descriptions and we don't even notice it sometimes because we are so familiar with the product.
Understanding how to use technical descriptions is sort of complex. You have to relate how you go about explaining a definition to a certain audience. We use technical descriptions now at work. Instead of me saying that the chicken is ready or the fajitas are ready, I say that marinated and grilled chicken or satayed green bell peppers and red onions are ready. This step shows how you can pass on information to customers without them knowing it.
The Automotive industry uses technical definitions all the time. For instance in wiring diagrams short descriptions are commonly added to explain circuit routing. Descriptions are made to help technicians and owners of complicated processes or parts. Also, when I started my job a descriptions was included to inform me of my duties. A complete description of my job was given to prepare me for what was to come. Several other technical descriptions also exist at work to instruct myself how to reset tire pressure monitoring systems.
Technical Descriptions are very importants. It is important because technical descriptions make what you are writing or saying more clear. When writing documents as a Construction Manager I will have to make them very Technical. Also, reading and understanding many of the legal documents that have to be signed is a very important task. It is good to use technical descriptions because it gets straight to the point and it will hold you more credible.
A technical description is another way of communication between a writer and a reader. We practice this kind of communication in all most part of our daily activities. As a student, I use it in most of my classes such as biology, chemistry and psychology.
The most important technical description I have ever used is the technical manual for my Laptop computer. One time my computer screen went blank and that is when I used the laptop manual. The description written was easy to follow and it explained why my computer screen was blank.
I know when our teachers start a new topic in class, it is very informational for them to introduce the topic first. If they can tell us where the topic originated, when it originated, and who was the person to originate the topic or the founder. Another thing that helps is to use diagrams or pictures of the topic so it is not all lecture or just words that they are trying to convey to us in the class.
Technical description is important in any work environment and also in educational institutions. I can relate to it when I was first learning a programming language. The materials I was reading was very technical. The author couldn't write the complex concepts of object-oriented programming in plain everyday language. After reading about twenty pages and doing two or three tutorials I was lost. The structure of the writing was like reading another language. After that, I got hold of a different text and this one totally help me greatly. The descriptions the author contributes to the book was amazing. The book was easy to apprehend at the same time pretty technical as well. Good descriptions can go a long way.
I used technical descriptions in one of my speech classes because we had to do observations of the public and use terms from the class. These observations had to be understandable to people that didn't know the material before hand. I also will need to know about technical descriptions later in my career because I plan on going into the Public Relations field so I will most likely have to help with marketing and promotional items but also with proposals and reports.
I believe that Chapter 15 will be of great use for me in my future career because most of my classes that I will be taking are science such as chemistry and biology. And the best part is that as dietitian I will be expected to describe meal plans to patients as well to other professional in my workplace. Other responsibilities that relate with describing will be explaining patients the reasons why some food can be beneficial or harmful to our body. Another way I can use this chapter for back up will be for my article presentation, because our job basically is to describe and inform the article purpose.
Chapter 15 has some very interesting information about how to do technical descriptions. I've used this in my speech not to long ago for this class using visuals and going into more detail as in how something is used and where. The more information you have on a topic and the better you understand what it is the better you can teach someone else about that topic. The use of visuals picking the right one to better explain what you presenting. Chapter 15 was a good reminder.
I never thought about how important technical descriptions are to my job before I read this chapter. I work in cosmetics, and every day I help someone find the right skin care routine for them. Since the customer usually knows very little about the products they are about to use, I need to write down how to use the products and which order to use them in. If I forget, the customer is usually back in my store within a couple of days because they don't know how to use them.
This chapter was interesting because it really pertains to technical communication. These days, details are everything since there are a lot of barriers to communication due to technology such as text messaging in e-mail. Since text messaging and e-mails are a huge means for communication it is very important to be very detailed in the messages we are sending and trying to get across to the receiver. It was interesting to read how to include the detail.
When I think about a technical description I think of biology and chemistry. I am not in these classes so the chapter was a little bit confusing. The chapter was helpful explaining certain details that a project should include. When working in a career you may be asked to use a technical description because that language is used throughout the job.
I typically don't use technical documents in my everyday life, so it makes it difficult for me to relate this to anything that I do. I do write daily, but not in technical documentation. Actually, I have done very little technical writing outside of this class and the most I have done is in summaries and reports for the class.
When working for Best Buy I was using technical descriptions everyday, by both verbally and in written form. We had available to us were online information about the computers that gave us far more information than that was listed on our tags in front of the computers. Once and awhile I would print these off and show them to the customers and help explain what it all meant, as many was in computer short hand terms.
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