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DUE: August 26

In this module you will learn about some of the essential things you will need to incorporate into a written technical document to make it clear, concise, coherent, and correct, as well as effective. Go through all of the topics, and read through each reading assignment.

In writing classes in school, most of what you have been called upon to write has been assigned to you by the teacher, because, well, after all, you have to write something in a writing class. But the something that you wrote, in many cases, was not something that you found interesting--and guess what, it was probably not something that the teacher found interesting either. Both of you were doing a job that you "had" to do.

But in the real world, where technical writing is actually done, there is always a real reason for writing. Somebody really needs to know something, or believe something, or take some action. The writing is supposed to be the trigger for that result to happen.

Furthermore, there is always a real audience--a real person or group of persons who needs to know or wants to know or is refusing to take an action you think they should take or doing something that requires a piece of writing to fix. The more you know about that real audience, the more you can make your piece of writing take direct aim at them--at their beliefs or values or education or prejudices or whatever.

Finally you yourself, as the writer, have a voice, a stance, an attitude both toward your audience and toward the subject you are writing about. For your writing to "work," to be successful, that voice must come through--and in fact most of the time if it really does, your writing will be successful.

But of course, the voice you select must "fit" the audience and the purpose. In technical writing--in all writing--in life in fact--FIT is everything.

1. Let me ask you a question:

Why don’t you wear a bathing suit to a formal wedding, especially if it is Austin, Texas, and it’s held outside and it’s 106 #%&*! degrees and you’re sweating like a pig in your tux or your formal and you can feel the sweat running down your back and your shirt is stuck to your belly it’s so hot?

Put your answer right here. So why not wear the bathing suit under these weather conditions?

2. What does this answer have to do with the rhetoric of technical writing? Put your answer right here.

Now give your response your best shot. Don’t just fill in the space with something you can’t really defend or don’t really believe. You can’t effectively go on to the first topic in this module, where we work out the details of all this in realistic technical writing settings, if you don’t really "get" this writer, audience, and voice business.

3. So if you have a question for me, ask:

For grading purposes, please provide the following information:

Once you have filled in all of the areas above, click the Send the assignment button below to send the assignment to the instructor.

E-mail Greg Larkin at Gregory.Larkin@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-4911

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