Relevance and Purposes

Relevance and Purpose of Technical Communication

Technical communication plays an important role in an organization.  All managerial or administrative activities involve communication.  When you write reports, give instructions, or read brochures and manuals you are involved in the process of communication.  The success of any organization is largely recognized by the quality and quantity of information flowing through its personnel.

Technical communication is essential in an organization, because it serves as a medium to share the information. People who are working in a company should have a mutual understanding which can be attained by sharing their knowledge. This technical communication turns to be effective when researches are made and they are conveyed to each other.

Technical communication is very significant for the practical application of sciences, for learning the mechanics in technology, for the promotion of technological research and for training the technical professionals. As the world is now confronting serious quandary due to the vibrant knowledge of technology, these kind of unrecognized jobs are being explored.

Purpose of Technical Writing
Technical writing has three important purposes:
1. It gives information in decision making and task accomplishments.
2. It analyzes events and their implications, the failure of systems.
3. It persuades and influences decision making.

The purpose of Technical Communication is to inform, not impress.

·         Write in a clear, informal style, avoiding jargon and acronyms.

The technical professions should have clear organization in writing and logical reasoning. They should write clear and concise sentences. They should follow the standard conventions of grammar, punctuation, and other mechanics.

The correct interpretation of the term depends heavily on the reader’s prior knowledge of the subject being discussed; the non-specialists would be able to guess the intended meaning of the compound term as a whole.

·         Avoid language that might be considered sexist, and write with the journal’s international audience in mind.

There are many rules for making the scientific and technical writings easy for non-specialists too. From this perspective, communications skills are not just handy; they are critical tools for success, even survival, in ‘real world’ environments.

·         Use the first person and active voice.

The primary training and interests of engineering students lie in technical areas. Most of the engineering students successfully pursue their technical subjects but without extra writing courses. After their studies, being practicing engineers and scientists in government and industry, they work on technical projects. It might seem they pursue and practice well and that writing and communication are superfluous to a technical education. In fact, this is not the case. Scientists and engineers may be technically brilliant and creative, but unless they can convince co-workers of their worth, the technical skills will be unobserved, unrewarding, and unused. If technical people cannot communicate to others what they are doing and why it is important, it is they and their technical skills that will be superfluous. So the importance of technical communication has to be noted. For example, most industries are composed of internal units that include, at least, a marketing unit, a manufacturing unit, an engineering unit, a design unit, and a management unit. These units are the internal organizations in the industries. While they all strive toward the same end, they do not necessarily agree among themselves. The engineers or scientists must present themselves effectively in competition. Inevitably, it is a part of their responsibility to transmit understandably the results of their work to other people, both verbally and in writing.

Communication tasks are important to success in the technical professions and constitute a relatively large part of a job. The American Society for Engineering Education conducted a survey to determine which academic skills are most needed in industry. The results show that communication skills rank above any other type of skill, capturing five of the most-needed skills, out of thirty-eight skills analyzed.

These five communication skills are:
- Technical writing                (2nd place)
- Public speaking                 (4th place)
- Working with individuals   (6th place)
- Working with groups         (7th place)
- Talking with people            (9th place)