Technical Writing

Chapter 11 is about how to use graphics in presentations, paper, etc. This is a very useful chapter because not only does it help your writing becaome more appealing but it also makes your paper become more likeable i guess you could say. People dont like boring white backgrounds, they like to be able to see things that help help support what the author is trying to say. Like the book says, your graphics should always support and reinforce your topic, not change it or make a bigger statement. Overall this is a good chapter and really helps set good guidelines on how to incorporate graphics.

This chapter is mainly about how to create a website and how to incorporate graphics in your writings to make the writing more appealing. I really did not like the beggining of the chapter because the author just stated the basic parts of a webpage or website, which in todays society is pretty repetetive because everyone now a days knows what a website is composed of. Otherwise the chapter was very useful because it did give some good details on how to create a website and make it more appealing to your audience. Overall it was a good and descriptive chapter that really ties in to our world today.

In chapter 17 the author talks about letters, and memos in general in the workplace. The author emphasizes that the more formal your letter or memo is the more seriously your reader will take it. I believe this is true because if you are presenting a letter to your boss you will not make it look like a letter to your friend. This includes emails and all electronical formats of letters. The author touches on the basic features of a letter and it is a great reminder and really refreshes your memory.

I believe that this is a great chapter to refresh your memory about how to formally write and format letter and memos and such. This is a good chapter overall.

Chapter 10 emphasizes on designing a technical document that will help readers understand the information provided quickly and easily. The author brings his five principles of design which are balance, alignment, grouping, consistency and contrast. These principles are very important, I think, because balance provides stability in the document, alignment gives it good structure, grouping which gives the paper the element of togetherness, consistancy gives the paper order so the reader does not get lost, and contrast that will appeal to the reader and add some energy and feeling to the document.

I believe that this chapter is very well written. Now that I know the authors style of writing, I can see now that the author does use the principles discussed above and i think that it is very important to the reader that the reader sees the information that the author believes and that the author uses his beliefs. But overall I believe that the chapter was well written and overall very useful.

This chapter is mostly about how to creat the style of your paper. Style is how you choose your words, choosing a tone that is appropriate for your audience, organizing your paragraphs and adding some visual contents to make your document more appealing.

The author states that there are 3 main, general styles of writing. These styles are plain style, which is just a general paper that gives information on a topic, persuasive style and grand style. The author explains in detail on how each of these styles work and how to use them to your advantage.

Overall the chapter has good techniques to help you find your style of writing and how to properly portray your style of writing. It is a good and well put together chapter in my opinion.

This chapter is about how to organize and make a successful draft. Following the format of including an introduction, body, and conclusion, and said by Johnson, will help create consistancy in your paper and help your readers not get confused. These steps also help you keep on topic and not to get off your topic. The author also talks about how genre plays a big part on how you organize and keep your readers attention. So making your genre appear qouckly in your document is crucial to keeping your readers attention, in my opinion. After you have determined your genre and purpose, you can start your rough draft. To do so you can use the outline view on your computer as stated by the author. After this you can start to organize your different sections of the paper such as introduction, body and conclusion.

So overall, I believe that this chapter is very useful and the author actually is very detailed and helps the reader understand what he is trying to say. He isnt repetitive like he usually is in past chapters and this makes me want to keep reading because i dont get annoyed. So overall it is a good chapter.

In this chapter the author emphasizes on incorporating ethics in your technical writing paper. The categories of ethics that the author uses are morals, social, and cultural values that define an individual, group, or community. In my opinion without ethics your paper will not appeal to certain audiences and it will make your paper more bias. You might offend certain people or not look as interesting to others. This is very important in the technical world because you have to keep in mind all the people that will be reading your paper.

This chapter also talks about cyberbullying and computer harrassment. On this issue the author gives you many tips on how to avoid getting harrassed and not harass others. This is very important because you can prevent offending others and also help yourself by avoiding getting offended.

I think this chapter was very well put together and that it helps you a lot with the many tips and examples it gives.

This chapter is very interesting and emphasizes on ways to revise and edit papers after you have finished. The author has created four different ways to edit your paper. The first is revising the document, then substantive editing, then copyediting, and finally proofreading. These four things as a whole ensure that your document is good by making sure your paper is written correctly and is in the right context, seeing how your document looks overall, seeing how your documents details are and making sure you have followed the correct style throughout the whole paper and ensurung you are appealing to the correct audiences, and lastly that your paper has correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, ect.

I believe that these four steps are crutial in writing a good paper because writing a paper does not only mean you have to show you know what your talking about but you have to also make the paper look credable and reliable and you do this editing and revising your paper using the four steps given by the author.

Chapter 20 was mostly about how important it is to follow step by step instruction and how they help you complete a task. The other talks a lot about instructions, specifications, and procedures and protocols. It explains how important instuctions are and how they help all people wirte in the technical world.

I think that his points and views are every good and he gives great examples not only text wise but also great visuals that really help you understand what the author is trying to get across, which is how important instructions, procedures and proocals are in the technical writning world.

The chapter was mostly about how to plan and organize yoursel when you are writing a paper. The author talks about three planning strategies to help you organize and plan your writings; these are setting of objectives, creating a list of tasks, and setting a timeline. i do agree with the author with these steps because if u do ollow thses steps you will inish on time and your paper will be organized. The author also talks about persuation a lot in this chapter and stresses how important it is, and how often it is used in many types of writing in the work place. i also agree with this because in many writings such as proposals, insruction manuels, oficial letters, etc. Overall this was a good and well written chapter.