{"id":132,"date":"2019-06-11T22:13:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T22:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=132"},"modified":"2019-07-18T17:49:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T17:49:32","slug":"10-writing-instructions","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/chapter\/10-writing-instructions\/","title":{"raw":"10. Writing Instructions","rendered":"10. Writing Instructions"},"content":{"raw":"<p class=\"p1\">One of the most common and important uses of technical writing is instructions\u2014those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. Although this might sound simple, writing a clear, easy-to-understand set of instructions requires attention to detail and careful crafting of sentences. Instructions are often some of the worst-written documents you can find. Like almost every consumer in the developed world, you've probably had infuriating experiences with badly-written instructions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_448\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"724\"]<img class=\"wp-image-448\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4560\/2019\/06\/20140426\/Ikea-Parody-as-a-Birthday-Present-1024x707.jpg\" alt=\"Graphic instructions for planting and growing a tree, waiting until you're old, then cutting down the tree and making a cane from the wood.\" width=\"724\" height=\"500\" \/> Writing clear, user-friendly instructions is challenging. (Ikea Parody as a Birthday Present by Daniel is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)[\/caption]\r\n<p class=\"p1\">Ultimately, good instruction writing requires:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li class=\"p1\">Clear, simple writing<\/li>\r\n \t<li class=\"p1\">A thorough understanding of the procedure in all its technical detail<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Awareness of audience and purpose<\/li>\r\n \t<li class=\"p1\">The ability to put yourself in the place of the person who will use your instructions<\/li>\r\n \t<li class=\"p1\">The ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and write a step-by-step analysis of the procedure<\/li>\r\n \t<li class=\"p1\">Willingness to test your instructions on the kind of person you wrote them for<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThis chapter will show you what professionals consider to be the best instruction-writing techniques.","rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">One of the most common and important uses of technical writing is instructions\u2014those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. Although this might sound simple, writing a clear, easy-to-understand set of instructions requires attention to detail and careful crafting of sentences. Instructions are often some of the worst-written documents you can find. Like almost every consumer in the developed world, you&#8217;ve probably had infuriating experiences with badly-written instructions.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_448\" style=\"width: 734px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-448\" class=\"wp-image-448\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4560\/2019\/06\/20140426\/Ikea-Parody-as-a-Birthday-Present-1024x707.jpg\" alt=\"Graphic instructions for planting and growing a tree, waiting until you're old, then cutting down the tree and making a cane from the wood.\" width=\"724\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-448\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Writing clear, user-friendly instructions is challenging. (Ikea Parody as a Birthday Present by Daniel is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">Ultimately, good instruction writing requires:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\">Clear, simple writing<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\">A thorough understanding of the procedure in all its technical detail<\/li>\n<li>Awareness of audience and purpose<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\">The ability to put yourself in the place of the person who will use your instructions<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\">The ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and write a step-by-step analysis of the procedure<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\">Willingness to test your instructions on the kind of person you wrote them for<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This chapter will show you what professionals consider to be the best instruction-writing techniques.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-132\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>This chapter is a derivative of Online Technical Writing by Dr. David McMurrey, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prismnet.com\/~hcexres\/textbook\/\">https:\/\/www.prismnet.com\/~hcexres\/textbook\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Technical Writing Essentials by Kim Wozencraft is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise indicated.<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section>","protected":false},"author":92081,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"This chapter is a derivative of Online Technical Writing by Dr. David McMurrey, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prismnet.com\/~hcexres\/textbook\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-nc-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"Technical Writing Essentials by Kim Wozencraft is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise indicated.\"}]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-132","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":103,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92081"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/132\/revisions\/490"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/103"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/132\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sunyulster227technicalwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}