To: Nancy Myers

From: David Whitehall

Date: September 29, 2022
Subject: APLED 121-Chapter 4 Summary

CHAPTER 4
OBJECTIVES IN TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

Achieving Clarity in Technical Communication

 Provide Specific Detail: In order to be clear in one’s writing we must be specific and to the point
in our wording.
 Answer Reporter’s Questions: The five W’s, Who, what, where, when, why, and how; all these
help us add further clarity to our writing.
 Use Easily Understandable Words: “Write to express, not to impress.” By using small easy to
understand words we are much more clearly able to make a point in our writing to our readers.
Simplifying Words, Sentences and Paragraphs for Conciseness
 Conciseness Saves Time: Time is money, do not waste people’s time with long drawn-out
convoluted paragraphs.
 Technology Demands Conciseness: In the modern age we are often restricted in how many
words or characters we can include in our posts like the 140-character limit on twitter.
 Conciseness Improves Readability: Readability is critical when trying to make a point in our
writing, luckily there are many metrics by which we can calculate the readability of our writing.
 Limit Word Length for Conciseness: To increase our clarity and be more concise it serves to
reduce the length of our words while writing to make it more to the point and simple.
 Limit Sentence Length for Conciseness: As with word length it also helps to reduce sentence
length to help make our writing easier to read.
 Limit Paragraph Length for Conciseness: While it should not take priority over the information it
carries, paragraph length, like sentence and word length, also plays a large role in how concise
our writing will be.
Achieving Accuracy in Technical Communication

Organizing Technical Communication

The Writing Process at Work
 Prewriting
 Writing
 Rewriting