English 5365 Week Six Post
Topic: What is elegant to a technical communicator, would you say? Is that something different than what your current or future profession subscbribes to?
Elegance to a technical communicator is by necessity something different than elegance to a poet. A technical communicator needs to present subject matter clearly and concisely, in a manner that allows the reader to understand the content. A technical communicator needs to know the audience to successfully perform this task. The same technical communicator would use different words to describe the same thing, depending on the skill level of the audience. For example, the description of a chemical reaction in a journal publication is much different from the description of that same reaction in an introductory text book or even in a popular publication. It does no good to concisely use the technical terms if the audience does not understand them.
In my current workplace, simplicity for experts is expected. The audience members are experts in their fields, but may not be experts in the English language. The word "N-(2,4-dinitrophenyl)-2-phenylfulleropyrrolidine" would not throw them for a loop but a difficult sentence construction might, depending on the particular reader. The elegant sentence would contain technical terminology, appropriate references, and the appropriate number of verbs for nouns, etc.
If we were working with introductory content in the same field, the difficult words would need to be introduced, but at the end of sentences, following some ramp up or definition of their meanings.
Elegance to a technical communicator is by necessity something different than elegance to a poet. A technical communicator needs to present subject matter clearly and concisely, in a manner that allows the reader to understand the content. A technical communicator needs to know the audience to successfully perform this task. The same technical communicator would use different words to describe the same thing, depending on the skill level of the audience. For example, the description of a chemical reaction in a journal publication is much different from the description of that same reaction in an introductory text book or even in a popular publication. It does no good to concisely use the technical terms if the audience does not understand them.
In my current workplace, simplicity for experts is expected. The audience members are experts in their fields, but may not be experts in the English language. The word "N-(2,4-dinitrophenyl)-2-phenylfulleropyrrolidine" would not throw them for a loop but a difficult sentence construction might, depending on the particular reader. The elegant sentence would contain technical terminology, appropriate references, and the appropriate number of verbs for nouns, etc.
If we were working with introductory content in the same field, the difficult words would need to be introduced, but at the end of sentences, following some ramp up or definition of their meanings.
posted by Jessica Badger at
7:45 PM
3 Comments:
Nice post, Jessica. I totally agree that elegance in TC is of a different kind than in poetry. You emphasized clarity and concision, and I agree we hold those up as our ideals. Do you think there are times when, as tech writers, we tend to follow the "elegance in simplicity" mantra to a fault?
I also like your point that elegance is tied to kairos--i.e., to the needs and expectations of the situation and our discourse community. It's fascinating, too, when elegant statements within a discourse community somehow transcend that community and are recognized as "extraordinary" by people outside of it. Have you encountered any writing like that in your job?
Good thinking here. Yes, elegance to a TCer includes clarity and concision. I'd say, also, that there is something about timeliness to it, too, both in terms of production and ease of access. There is elegance to searching and finding EXACTLY the right thing on Google, for instance.
Hi Jessica,
I agree that technical communicators achieve elegance in technical writing mainly through clarity and concision. Since technical communication is reader centered, the main task of technical communicators is both to provide only the need-to-know information and to make the technical information more accessible to readers.
Xiling
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