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What is Technical Writing?
Technical writing is the resume that helps get a job and the web page that promotes a company. Technical writing is communication written for and about business and industry, focusing on products and services: how to manufacture or create them, how to market them, manage them, deliver them, use them, and on and on.
Technical writing is an instructional manual for repairing machinery; a memo listing a meeting's agenda; a letter from a vendor to a client; a recommendation report proposing a new computer system.
When you go to a hotel, an amusement park, a historical landmark, a zoo, a museum, or a college campus, do you pick up a research paper at the door, explaining the site's unique traits? When you receive news from stock companies or alumni organizations or professional associations, do you get this new in the form of a research paper? No, you do not. You either pick up a brochure at the door or receive a newsletter in the mail.
Teaching research papers is important because performing research is a valuable skill for students. However, that research can be packaged in a different form, one more commonplace in society. How about having the students write a researched brochure? Students could research historical figures, literary characters, business technology, marketing trends, new animal vaccinations, identity theft prevention, food safety myths and turn all of that research into multi-page newsletters.
No one type of correspondence defines technical writing. Instead, technical writing consists of many different types of documentation:
Source: Writing That Works, by Steven M. Gerson, published by the Kansas Curriculum Center, 2003.
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