Technical Information for a Non-Technical Audience

The ability to explain complex, technical matters with ease, grace, and simplicity so that non-specialist readers understand almost effortlessly is one of the most important skills you can develop as a technical writer. This ability to translate or “articulate” difficult-to-read technical discussions is important because so much of technical writing is aimed at non-specialist audiences, such as supervisors, executives, investors, financial officers, government officials, and customers.

Articulating is particularly important because it means supplying the right kinds of information to make up for the reader’s lack of knowledge or capability; it involves deciding what information to include and exclude. It also involves deciding how to discuss the information you choose to use. Articulating thus enables readers to understand and use your document.

Strategies for translating technical information include the following:

define unfamiliar terms pose a rhetorical question
provide an illustration elaborate a process
compare unfamiliar to familiar things provide descriptions, examples. and applications
explain the importance or significance of something provide historical or theoretical background

This rest of this page elaborates on a few of these strategies for articulating technical information, to make difficult technical discussions easier for non-specialist readers to understand.

Define Unfamiliar Terms

Defining potentially unfamiliar terms in a report is one of the most important ways to make up for readers’ lack of knowledge in the report subject. Definition can be through words or a combination of words and illustration.

For example:

Taken as a whole, the face of patients of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is very distinctive.

Structural deficiencies are thought to be the result of reduced cellular proliferation in the developing stages of the embryo because of the direct action of the alcohol.

The face has a drawn-out appearance with characteristics that include short palpebral fissures, epicanthic folds, low nasal bridge, a short upturned nose, indistinct philtrum, small midface, and a thinned upper vermilion.

 

 

Compare Unfamiliar to Familiar Things

Comparing technical concepts to ordinary and familiar things in our daily lives makes them easier to understand. For example, computer and electronics may be intimidating areas for many people.  But many concepts in these fields can be compared to channels of water, the five senses of the human body, gates and pathways, or other common things. Notice how comparison is used in the following passages:

The helical configuration of the DNA strands is not haphazard. The nitrogen bases on each strand align themselves to form nitrogen base pairs. The pairs are T-A and C-G. Each pair is held together by hydrogen bonds. The pairing of the bases serves to fasten the two helical nucleotide strands together much the same way as the teeth of a zipper hold the zipper together. The existence of the complementary base pairs explain the constant ratios of T/A and C/G. For every T there must be a complementary A and for every G there must be a complementary C.

David S. Newman, An Invitation to Chemistry (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 380-381.

All the death and all the misery from a virus so small that 2-1/2 million of them in a line would take up one inch. Flu viruses fall into three types: A, B, and C. Type A, the most variables, causes pandemics as well as regular seasonal outbreaks; type B causes smaller outbreaks and is just now receiving greater attention; type C rarely causes serious health problems. In appearance, a flu virus somewhat resembles the medieval mace—a ball of iron studded with spikes. Hemagglutinin is the substance that in effect bashes into a cell during infection and allows the virus access to the cell interior where it can replicate.

Stephen S. Hall, “The Flu,” Science 83, (November 1983), pages 56-57.

Ask a Rhetorical Question

A rhetorical question is a question that you’re expected to consider and not necessarily answer. It’s a device writers use to engage readers by bringing them into the “conversation” of the text. For example, in a set instructions for medical professionals doing blood draws, which sentence would draw you in to read more fully?

  • What do you do when safety has been compromised?
  • Troubleshooting Safety Issues

If you ask a rhetorical question in technical writing, understand that you need to answer that question shortly after you ask it, to keep your reader engaged. Note that while rhetorical questions can be an effective way of simplifying an explanation, use them sparingly for maximum effectiveness.

Explain the Importance of Something

Sometimes, articulating works because it motivates readers. Readers may need to be talked into concentrating on a difficult technical discussion; one way to do this is to explain the importance of what’s being discussed.

In the paragraph below, the second, twelfth, and last sentences function to point out importance; the twelfth sentence is also a rhetorical question.

[1] It was Linus Pauling and his coworkers who discovered that sickle cell anemia was a molecular disease. [2] This disease affects a very high percentage of black Africans, as high as 40 percent in some regions. [3] About 9 percent of black Americans are heterozygous for the gene that causes the disease. [4] People who are heterozygous for sickle cell anemia contain one normal gene and one sickle cell gene. [5] Since neither gene in this case is dominant, half the hemoglobin molecules will be normal and half sickled. [6] The characteristic feature of this disease is a sickling of the normally round, or plate-like, red blood cells under conditions of slight oxygen deprivation. [7] The sickled red blood cells clog small blood vessels and capillaries. [8] The body’s response is to send out white blood cells to destroy the sickled red blood cells, thus causing a shortage of red blood cells, or anemia. [9] The sickle cell gene originated from a mistake in information. [10] A DNA molecule somehow misplaced a base, which in turn caused an RNA molecule to direct the cell to make hemoglobin with just one different amino acid unit among the nearly 600 normally constituting a hemoglobin molecule. [11] So finely tuned is the human organism that this tiny difference is enough to cause death. [12] Since the disease is nearly always fatal before puberty, how can a gene for a fatal childhood disease get so widespread in a population? [13] The answer to this question gives some fascinating insight into the mechanism and purposes of evolution, or natural selection. [14] The distribution of sickle cell anemia very closely parallels the distribution of a particularly deadly malaria-causing protozoan by the name of Plasmodium falciparum, and it turns out that there is a close connection between sickle cell anemia and malaria. [15] Those people who are heterozygous for the sickle cell gene are relatively immune to malaria and, except under reasonably severe oxygen deprivation such as that found at high altitudes, they experience no noticeable effects due to the sickle cell gene they carry. [16] Half the hemoglobin molecules in the red cells of heterozygous people are normal and half are sickled. [17] Thus, under ordinary circumstances the normal hemoglobin carries on the usual respiratory functions of blood cells and there is little discomfort. [18] On the other hand, the sickled hemoglobin molecules precipitate, in effect, when the malaria-causing protozoan enters the blood. [19] The precipitated hemoglobin seems to crush the malaria protozoan, thus keeping the malaria from being fatal. [20] The significance of all this should be pondered.

 

David S. Newman, An Invitation to Chemistry, pages 387-388.

Elaborate a Process, Provide Descriptions & Examples, Provide Historical/Theoretical Background

With any technique that involves adding information, you need to strike a good balance between necessary and too much information. This is where audience analysis is key. If you know that your audience is mostly non-technical, you can provide more explanation. If your audience is a mixture of people with technical and non-technical backgrounds, you may need to consider putting fuller information into a footnote or an appendix.