Week 4

Driskell writes about how it is important to understand how the skills learned in other
fields apply to technical communication. One must understand the differences between the
reasoning of different groups of professionals
within a company or organization. It can serve as a primary key to anticipating the
organizations needs and use of evidence in documents produced by that group or person.
Likewise, understanding what kind of rhetorical approach to use with different audiences
is important, as members of different departments read documents differently; they read
with their experience and needs in mind.

The Rydeski article really reminded me of my days at the newspaper. Essentially, I
had to deal with two style guides: the Associated Press Style guide and the staff
manual created by the Editor in Chief before me. The format of the AP guide was
pretty good. It did a lot of the things mentioned in Rydeski’s article, including
giving one answer, not including everything, and a section on copyright protection
and anti-plagiarism policies. However, sometimes, information was difficult to find.
The part of the manual which discussed the proper way to refer to certain things
(i.e. Web sites) was well organized, but the rest of manual made information
difficult to find. It once took me entirely too long to figure out how to refer to
two different people that happened to share the same last name in a news article.
The staff manual was also really well done, and I had the pleasure of revising and
adding to it from time to time. Although it was very comprehensive, it was organized and sectioned off in such a way that made most information easy to find.

Norman’s article iterates a lot of what I’ve read about writing. Keep it simple and clear, etc. I was really intrigued by his comparison of writing and design – claiming that they are one and the same. I’ve never thought of them like that before. I’m often told that I am good at both writing and designing, so perhaps I’ve subconsciously understood Norman’s concept all along.