The Importance of Purpose

You should be clear about what you want to achieve with a technical document before you can think about design or the nature of your content. Unfocused publications don’t communicate effectively, just as unclear, disorganized, or poorly supported arguments are far less likely to persuade a reader. Before you start writing, spend some time articulating your purpose. Are you trying to inform? Persuade? Instruct? What is the best format for achieving your purpose? For example, trying to explain how to troubleshoot an appliance in prose only, with no visuals, is incredibly difficult no matter how skilled you are as a writer. Your purpose may require diagrams, graphics, or even video.

Also consider how many purposes you can manage at once, especially if your text needs to be brief. A single short brochure that attempts to advertise the services at a community center, encourage healthy eating habits, and persuade the audience to create healthy eating help groups will probably fail on one or all counts, because there are too many purposes for one short publication. More specific, focused content is nearly always more helpful and interesting to a reader. And more specific content, focused around one main purpose, is always more helpful to you as a writer, since your purpose dictates the specific type of content you need.

Sometimes your purpose is set for you. Readers of a business plan, for example, will expect certain information: an executive summary, a rundown of marketing strategies, financial requirements and assets, and a description of how the business will function. Know your audience, and make sure you cover all the required or conventional elements they expect.

Failing to understand your purpose and your audience’s needs, which drive your purpose, can cause you to produce a publication that readers can’t use. Think of a garage sale sign with no dates and no address. Readers of the sign won’t be able to use it, and they’ll just ignore it. Similarly, a set of instructions that doesn’t list the tools of your own that you need to assemble an object will generate a lot of annoying phone calls and emailed questions to the manufacturer.

As a technical writer, you should identify and then plan a communication scrupulously based on its purpose and audience. Then write a draft and get feedback to ensure that the purpose is being addressed and achieved. Writers of brochures, reports, and online pages know what they want to achieve before they ever write a word, and you should too. As Abraham Lincoln once supposedly said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe.” Creating a technical document requires you to think in advance about your purpose, your concept, your audience, your goals, your format, and your material needs (images, graphics, text, headlines, color schemes, etc.). Do your due diligence so your final product will have been worth the time you spent on it.

Technical Writing Purposes

Technical writing usually has one of the following purposes:

• to inform
• to persuade
• to instruct

Inform and Instruct

Writing to inform and instruct are self-explanatory; your purpose may be to get your reader to understand an item, concept, or process, and/or to teach your reader how to apply or do something with that item, concept, or process. The assumption that your reader is seeking out your information underlies writing whose purpose is to inform or instruct. Documents whose purpose is to inform or instruct rely on precise, specific, straightforward language that’s as clear and concise and possible.

Persuade

Persuasion is more complex, since you can assume that your reader is not seeking to be persuaded. In persuasion, your purpose is to get your reader to agree to perform an action or take a position on an issue that they may not have considered beforehand. When your purpose is to persuade, you need to consider your content and language fully and carefully in order to get the mix of appropriate and ethical rhetorical appeals.

• Logos – Appeal to Reason/Logic: This element involves grounding your argument in logic, reason, and evidence. What evidence supports your claims? On what facts and data is your reasoning based? Arguments grounded in reason and evidence are often considered the strongest. Government organizations and companies alike generally like to make evidence-based decisions.