Humans are incredibly visual creatures. Look at any Instagram account and you will see evidence that we are able to communicate rich, specific information in an incredibly short time with a picture. (Insert that cliché about a thousand words here.) Another of the important characteristics of technical communication is that it consists of words or images or both. Because readers respond to visuals–often before they check out the text itself–understanding how images and text work together to help readers understand complex information is an increasingly valuable skill for professional communicators.
As your readings made clear, professional communicators often rely on illustrations along with or instead of words to convey our messages. We can break illustrations into two categories: tables and figures. Depending on your academic background, you may or may not have a lot of experience working with tables and figures, but as professional writers, alternate methods of presenting data and information are valuable. You must be able to decide when to use an illustration and evaluate whether or not your illustration will be effective.
Assigned to read this week:
This slideshow hits some important high points and examples, but shouldn’t stand in place of reading the above chapters, hint, hint:
Graphics are important in technical communication, and one of the things I like about doing tech writing is that we use lots of graphics: drawings, charts, tables, bar charts, and on and on and on. You know the drill at this point if you read the assigned chapters. Purpose and audience, right? Remember that in most cases (unless you’re working on a solely visual genre as a graphic designer) you’re clarifying, illustrating, and augmenting the written text, not completely replacing it. Use both words and images to make your tech writing useful and usable by your audiences!
I’m not going to go on at length in this text-lecture about graphics–it’s mostly all been said by now–but I will point you to some useful resources for working with graphics in your word processors. These will be useful as you’re working on your fact sheets:
The following video tutorials walk through different kinds of visuals/graphics and introduce features in Microsoft Word for working with them. (Remember: each of you has access to Office 365 through the university AND a number of free downloads of the Office suite for your computer. Take advantage of these tools!)
Word: Tables
Word: Charts
Word: Formatting Pictures
Word 2016: Pictures and Text Wrapping
Finally, one last reminder that I’ll pull from one of the chapters, from David McMurrey:
Use graphics whenever they would normally be necessary—don’t wimp out because it seems like too much trouble! But at the same time, don’t get hung up about creating perfect graphics (scans and photocopies work just fine for our purposes as long as you cite your source). This course is a writing course, not a graphic-arts course.
You have no assignment for Tuesday. Spend time reviewing, researching, revising, and working on your fact sheet. Ask and discuss questions you have about the assigned material in the “2.7 Visuals, figures, tables, and other graphical elements” discussion thread on Tuesday, and I’ll answer them as quickly as possible.
Complete a second round of peer review on your fact sheet. Post an updated draft of your fact sheet for project 1 in your group’s “2.8 Peer Review of your Fact Sheets” discussion thread before 5:00 pm on Thursday.
Again, work to ensure that everyone has at least two people read their drafts–that way all the feedback doesn’t go to just a few folks. Use your group email, discussions, or whatever group chats you’ve set up to facilitate the process.
You can either post your feedback to the forum in a reply to the writer’s original post, or you can upload a document with comments inserted. Use whichever method you are most comfortable with.
Read each others’ fact sheets carefully and generously. Each time you review you should provide at least two actionable comments to each writer on any or all of the following areas:
A few things to remember about feedback:
Peer review is an opportunity to share, learn, and improve your writing. Not participating hurts your final product and the final products of others. Do your group a solid and be present for peer review!! If you do not post feedback to at least two people in your group, you cannot get full credit for peer review activities, even if you posted a draft on time.
Week 8 marks a transition in the course. In the first half of the course, you’ve gotten a rapid-fire introduction to primary strategies, elements, concepts, and approaches to technical and professional writing. It was quick and dirty, I know! Don’t worry–through the next part of the course, we’ll return to these ideas, refine them and look at more examples in your fields, that will help you put them into action.
Next week, we will zoom out and think broadly again about what technical and professional writing/communication is all about and how some of the things you’ve learned apply to the kinds of writing you see yourself doing ‘out there’ in the professional world. We’ll do two things:
Next week’s Tuesday discussion is mid-term-ish in spirit, in that you’ll participate in a discussion forum that asks you to return to some of the very first questions we asked in the course. As noted on the syllabus, there is no mid-term exam in the course.
Then on Thursday, you will turn in your fact sheet on professional writing in your field.