en 9 lesson 1
TRANSCRIPT
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EN 9TECHNICAL WRITING
LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING
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DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL
WRITING• Technical writing is a written
communication about a scientific ortechnical subject to a specific reader or
group of readers for the purpose of givingcertain information.
• It is also called scientific writing becauseit deals with a topic in any of the sciences.
These sciences are classified intobiological (botany, zoology, microbiology,etc.)
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physical (physics, chemistry, geology,
ecology, astronomy, etc.).
Moreover, it also deals with technical topics
such as electronics, refrigeration,
airconditioning, and the like. It is usually
addressed to a specific reader, intelligent
enough to grasp the specific information
given.
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WRITING PARADIGM
• Based on the SPEAKING paradigm
devised by Dell Hymes, this writer
formulated his paradigm for writing.
• To make any speaking engagement
successful, the speaker should consider
the elements that comprise the paradigm
of Hymes, as follows:
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S – setting (where and when) – time and place
P – participants (who) – interlocutorsE – end (why) – purpose
A – act (how) – manner
K – key (how formal) – formalityI – instrument (with what instrument or medium)
medium or instrument ued in communication
N – norm (what) – subjectG – genre (which kind) – exposition,
description, narration, or argumentation.
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W – width (to what extent) – scope
R – register (what language) – words used in the
field (computerese, medicalese, legalese, journalese, commercialese, diplomatese,
teacherese, telegraphese, etc.)
I – intention (why) – purpose
T – tenor (what conditions) – the tone and
circumstances surrounding the writing
I – information (what) – subject
N – needs of reader/s (who needs/what needs)recipient/s’ expectations
G – genre (which kind) – exposition, description,
narration or argumentation
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QUALITIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
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T – technology driven – He keeps abreast with
technological advances.
E – effectual – He produces the desired results.
C – curious – He is desirous to learn about differentthings.
H – honest – He tells the truth and does not resort to
plagiarism.
N – neutral – He is objective, impartial, and free from
bias.
I – intelligent – He uses his wit.
C – careful – He takes pain in doing his work.A – active – He displays tireless energy during the
course of his writing.
L – logical – He applies the principles of logic in his
writing
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W – workmanly – He is skillful in technical writing
R – resourceful – He makes us of primary
(persons, organizations, plants and animals,artifacts, documents, etc.) and secondary
(books, periodicals, internet, etc.) sources of
information.
I – interesting – He arouses the interest of hisreaders.
T – thorough – He comes up with a complete work
E – ethical – He conforms with the code ofprofessional ethics.
R – responsible – He does his work well and
without any prodding from others.
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TECHNICAL WRITING VERSUS
LITERARY WRITING
POINT OF
CONTRAST
TECHNICAL
WRITING
LETERARY WRITING
1. subject
2. Readership3. Purpose
4. Language
5. Style
6. Tone
7. Point of view
8. Emotionality
9. Objectivity
10. form/format
Scientific/technical
SpecificInformative/persuasive
Literal/denotative
Impersonal
Heavy/serious
Usually third person,
sometimes second
person
Unemotional
Objective/neutral
formal
Non-scientific/non-
technical
GeneralEntertaining
Figurative/connotative
Personal
Light/amusing
First person or third
person
Emotional
Subjective/biased
informal
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Technical writing deals with a science topic or
a technical subject.
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If a technical writer focuses on cats, then histreatment is science-oriented, that is,biological.
His readers must be biological students,teachers, and specialists or zookeepers andother interested parties.
His aim is to inform his readers about cats,using words in their literal sense (dictionary-based).
He makes us of an impersonal style, serious
tone, and third person (it, they) point of view.His writing is devoid of emotions and biases; it
conforms with the standard format.
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• Literary writers can also have cats astopics; however, their treatment isdifferent from that of technical writers.
• For example, Japanese writers, LadySarashina and Lady Shonagon, wroteabout cats in the form of short stories.
• Using a personal style and an amusingtone, they wrote emotion-laden storiesserving to amuse English readers ofalmost all ages.
• Both made use of figures of speech, but
one used the first-person point of viewand the other used the third-person pointof view.
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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR
CREATING JARGON
METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Acronymy Putting together the initial
letters of two or more words
to form new, words
IT, DNA, PMA, CFC, CCP,
UE, PNOC,PROC, APEC,
PEA, CAS, ASEAN,
UNESCO, PPA, VCO, POEA,
PACUCOA, ASAIHL, PAWS,GABRIELA, AIDS, ATOM,
LASER, SCUBA, RSVP
Affixing/
Adding
Adding affixes (prefixes
and/or suffixes) to roots
(words or combining forms)to form new words
Reincarnation, abiotic,
predetermined, avoids, post-
war, war-like, heroine,infixes, synonymous, pre-
natal, immortality, restated,
unchristian, ejects,
contributions, remits.
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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR
CREATING JARGON
METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Blending/
Cannibalizing
Removing some parts of
two or more words and
putting together the
remaining parts to form newwords.
Sitcom, domsat, scifi, polsci,
trapo, comsci, psywar, spork,
smog, skorts, internet,
modem, bit, brunch, biotech,infotech, walkathon,
escalator, simulcast
Borrowing Using words from other
languages with or without
retaining the original
spelling of such words,
Boonduck (bundok), pizza,
ballet, vaudeville, vodka,
champagne, precis, troika,
café, ikebana, kamikaze,
politburo, gesellschaft,
malermeister, blitzkrieg,
lasagna, kimchi
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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR
CREATING JARGON
METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLESClipping/
Chipping/
Truncating
Removing the head part,
tall part, or both parts of the
word to form a new word
Ref, fridge, lib, lab, math,
chem, gen, zoo, bio, gym,
jeep, bus, wig, combo, demo,
chemo, lipo, senti, hippo,
polio, amoo, emo, nuke,
mike, bike, archi, opto,promo, revo, derma, antibac,
indie
Compounding Putting together two or
more words to form new
words
Solid Compounds (without
hypen or space)
- footnote, headword, within;Hyphenated Compounds
(with hyphen/s) – editor-in-
chief, son-in-law, sergeant-
at-arms; Spaced Compounds
(with space/s) – ticket office,
sound effects
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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR
CREATING JARGON
METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Converting Changing the part of
speech of words without
changing the spelling of
such words to form new
words
Nounizing – turning verbs
and adjectives into nouns.
Swimming is her hobby, The
old should be respected.
Verbizing – turning nounsand adjectives into verbs.
Don’t just paint it; Sniclair it.
Adjectivizing – turning nouns
and verbs into adjectives,
father image, wash and wear
clothes.
Hybridizing Putting together forms from
two or more languages to
form new words
Totalinis, patatasnack,
Paleocene, Holocene, bakya
crowd, bahala-na attitude,
manana habit.
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METHODS OF FORMING WORDS OR
CREATING JARGON
METHOD DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Immortalizing Using people’s names to
form new words
Pasteurization, wattage,
Maoism, guillotine,
Eustachian tube, Lamaze
method, Phytagorean,theorem, Marxism,
Buddhism, Leningrad
Recycling Using words not in their
original sense to form new
words
Fly-over, floor price, ceiling
price, door prize, Christmas
tree, (eng’g), diaper
(architecture)
Back Formation Removing affixes to form
new words
Enthuse, liaise
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CLASSIFICATION OF STRUCTURE IN
ENGLISH SENTENCES
KIND DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Structure of
Predication
A structure that is
composed of a subject (S)and a predicate (P)
An academic year usually
starts in June. A fiscal yearalways begins on January 1.
Structure of
Modification
A structure that is
composed of aheadword/word modified
(H) and a modifier (M)
Maytime festivals
Festivals during Maytime.
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CLASSIFICATION OF STRUCTURE IN
ENGLISH SENTENCES
KIND DEFINITION EXAMPLES
S
U
B
T
Y
P
E
Structure of Pre-
modification
Structure of post-
modification
A modification
structure in which the
modifier comes
before the headword
A structure in which
the modifier comes
after the headword
Passing marks
successful people
Marks w/h are passing,
people who are
successful
Structure of
Complementation
A structure that is
composed of a
verb/verbal (V) and a
complement (COMP)
To hold the natives
captive comprise the
atmosphere examined
the specimen in the
vial experimenting on
the guinea pigs.
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CLASSIFICATION OF STRUCTURE IN
ENGLISH SENTENCES
KIND DEFINITION EXAMPLES
Structure of
Coordination
A structure that is
composed of two or more
independent units (IU) and
a coordinator (CO)
Solids, liquids, and gases
(coordination of words)
biodegradable materials or
nonbiodegradable wastes(coordination of phrases)
Scientist discover new
things; moreover, they invent
new devices. (ccordination of
clauses)
Structure of
Subordination
A structure that is
composed of a dependent
unit (DU) and a
subordinator (SUB)
On land due to the cold
climate because he was
bitten by a venomous snake
after they landed on the
moon.
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PROPERTIES of TECHNICAL
WRITING
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• ACCURACY – An effective technical paper isaccurate.
• An accurate work is devoid of errors. Itsevery word is precise.
• Care must be exercised in the selection ofwords to be used in the paper.
• Moreover, editing or revising is required to
ensure that the errors are corrected becauseerrors are eyesores.
• A paper replete with errors is not attractive.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• BREVITY – An effective paper is brief orshort.
• Technical men, for example, businessmenand scientists, are busy people.
• They don’t have the time to read long papers.
• The shorter the paper, the sacrificed for thesake of brevity.
• To make a paper brief, the writer needs toprune out deadwood, redundancies, andother unnecessary words or phrases.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• COHERENCE – An effective paper is coherent.
• Coherence refers to the sticking together of ideas.
• An effective writer has a way of putting ideas
together to form a coherent whole.• He achieves this by using transitional or pivotal
words properly, avoiding dangling and squinting
modifiers and constructing coordination and
subordination structures correctly.• In short, proper collocation or putting side by side of
words that should be placed together, for example,
modifiers and headwords are needed.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• DIRECTNESS – An effective paper is directto the point.
• A technical writer has to refrain from going
around the bush or the so-called roundaboutconstruction.
• He also avoids long-winded introductions. Inwriting paragraphs, he normally begins with a
topic sentence, develops the main idea withsupporting sentences, and ends with aconcluding sentence.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• EMPHASIS – An effective technical paper isemphatic.
• To emphasize is to highlight main ideas anddownplay subordinate ones.
• To achieve emphasis, an effective writer makesuse of parallelism, position, proportion,repetition, variation, conciseness and othermeans.
• An idea that is emphasized is written eitherinitially or finally, repeatedly, differently orsimilarly with other structures, concisely orproportionately longer that the other ideas.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• FACTUALITY - An effective technical
paper is factual.
• The information that it contains is based
on facts; therefore, it is provable, testable,
and credible.
• It is not a product of man’s imagination,
speculation, or hallucination
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• GRAMMATICALITY – An effective
technical paper is grammatical.
• It does not violate grammatical rules oragreement between subject and verb,
between pronoun and antecedent, correct
forms of verbs and other grammaticalunits, syntax rules and the like adheres to
gramaticality.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• HEAVINESS – An effective technical
paper is heavy.
• Inasmuch as the subject matter of atechnical paper is serious, that is, a
scientific subject or technical topic
associated with the sciences, technicalwriting manifests heaviness.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• INTELLIGIBILITY – An effective technical paper isintelligible.
• Even if a technical paper contains technical orscientific terms, it must still be easily understood.
• An effective writer must have a way of makingdifficult terms easy on the part of the reader. He hasto provide pictures, drawings, charts, tables, andother graphic aids to promote reading
comprehension.• While he uses high-falutin words or jargon, he keeps
in mind that the reader’s understanding of thewritten material is of utmost importance.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• JUDICIOUNESS – An effective technical paper is
written judiciously in all stages of writing (pre-writing,
writing, and post writing) and in all aspects of
technical writing (syntax, diction, organization, etc.).
• A judicious writer always exercises good judgment.
• His ability to discriminate between fact and opinion,
between truth and falsity, between materiality and
immateriality, between goodness and badness,between ethicality and unethicality, is always put to
a test.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL WRITING
KEENNESS – An effective technical paper is
marked by keenness or sharpness. It is aproduct of a smart writer who makes use of his
intelligence to satisfy his readers.
LOGICALITY – An effective technical paper islogical. It conforms with the principles of logic,
the science of correct thinking and reasoning. It
does not take a logician to show correct spatial,
temporal, causal, genus-species, and otherrelationships of words and ideas. Effective
technical writing is a product of rational thinking
and sound reasoning.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL WRITING
MECHANICAL CORRECTNESS – An effective
technical paper is mechanically correct. Itconforms with the various rules of mechanics.
Mechanics involves the use of punctuation
marks, spelling, spacing, indention,
capitalization, italicization, margining, alignment,the use of numbers in figures and words, and
the like. Misspellings, fused sentences, comma
splices, and faulty punctuation are only some of
the mechanical errors. To correct these errors, atechnical writer must have an ample knowledge
of mechanical rules. A mechanically correct
work is not only presentable, but also reliable.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
NEUTRALITY – An effective technical paper
is neutral. It is not biased, it does not favor
only one side. It is not partial; it takes into
account all aspects or facets of the thing
under consideration. It is not prejudiced, it
does not discriminate against any person,
group, or race. Even if it is persuasive, itstill displays a tinge of neutrality.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
ORDER – An effective technical paper is written in
an orderly manner. The ideas are sequenced in
such a way that they flow smoothly. An effective
technical writer makes use of an outline toorganize his thoughts properly. He does not
immediately plunge into writing or rough-drafting
without having done pre-writing activities such
as brain-storming and clustering of ideas.Moreover, he employs proper formatting and
layouting of all materials, textual, and otherwise,
forming part of his paper.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
PERSONALITY – An effective technicalpaper manifests the writer’s personality. It
is a reflection of the kind of person the
writer is. A well-written work is an index ofa writer who is careful and responsible.
However, a work with many grammatical
errors, slips in thought, and inappropriatewords, is an indication of a writer who
does not exercise care in his work and
lacks a sense of responsibility.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
QUALITY - An effective technical paper is a
“quality” paper. A paper which lives up to
standards and possesses only all thepositive traits any technical writing must
have, is a paper of good quality. It has
substance and does not violate writing
principles or rules. Furthermore, it serves
its purpose and satisfies its readers.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
READER-FRIENDLINESS – An effective
technical paper is reader-friendly. It is
adapted to the reader’s needs, interests
and knowledge. An effective technical
writer knows his readers and makes his
writing fit them. He produces the right
effect because he considers his readersand knows how to make them respond to
his writings.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
SPECIFICITY – An effective technical paper
is specific, Unlike literary writing, technical
writing is written by a specific writer to For
instance, a sales letter is written by a sales
manager to a prospective buyer or buyers
for the purpose of promoting the product of
the company and boosting its sales.Moreover, words used are specific that the
reader/s can readily visualize the message
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• THOROUGHNESS – An effective technical paper is
thorough, it is a complete work, be it a letter, book,
report, journal, article, or another form.
• It must be thoroughly done; it must not miss out
anything that is essential or salient to its being.
• An effective writer provides all the important data or
whatever the reader needs.
• Unlike a narrative whose conclusion is left to thereader, a technical paper always has an introduction
(preview or overview), a body (view), and a
conclusion (review)
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
UNITY – An effective technical paper is
unified. Unity means consistency in
purpose, idea, subject, voice, mood,number, person, gender, language, etc., A
violation of these produces a disunified
paper.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
• VERACITY – An effective technical paper isveracious.
• It contains no lies and presents information
coming form reliable sources.• An honest writer does not plagiarize.
• When he borrows the words and ideas ofother people, he gives credit to them by
means of parenthetical citations and footnoteand bibliography entries.
• His work is properly documented.
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING
WORTH – An effectivetechnical paper has worth. It
is valuable to its readersbecause it satisfies thereader’s need forinformation.
PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
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PROPERTIES OF TECHNICAL
WRITING• Besides, it serves other purposes. For
example, a contract renders the agreementbetween or among parties binding or aninstructional manual helps the reader use the
equipment optimally.• Business letters promote the firm’s
financial standing, while research papers tendto improve life.
• Indeed, technical papers have intellectualvalue because of their informativeness; they havesocial, economic, and similar values, too.
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X-FACTOR
• An effective technical paper has an X-
factor.
• X-factor stands for an unknown factor, that
factor which makes a paper unique, or
distinct from other papers to the extent
that it stands out.
• This distinctive trait allows for easy recallof the paper.
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YUPPINESS
• An effective technical paper is yuppy.
• The term yuppy came from the acronym
YUP which stands for “young urban
professional.”
• Posseses the qualities of a young urban
professional.
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Zeal
• Effective paper has a zeal.
• Eager desire or enthusiastic diligence.