Lozein L.

Sang-an, LPT
Course Code ENGL2 Instructor Cyvelle Albaracin, LPT
Geune Maverie Dayan, LPT
[Link]@[Link]
E-mail
Course Title Writing in the Discipline [Link]@[Link]
Address [Link]@[Link]
(0909) 202 1355
Contact
Course Credits 3 units (0966) 155 9113
Number (0925) 506 1900
Course Consultation
General Course TTh – 3:30-4:30 pm
Classification Hours
Consultation
Pre-requisite(s) ENGL1 Faculty Office
Venue

Learning Module 1: A Process for Technical Writing

a. Planning
b. Drafting
c. Revising
d. Editing
Duration of Delivery: February 04 - 06, 2025
Due Date of Deliverables: February 06, 2025

By the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

a. Recognize the different characteristics of writing.
b. Define technical writing.
c. Identify the four processes of technical writing and their underlying tasks.
d. Evaluate one’s writing process.
e. Determine correct terms and concepts about technical writing.

1 | Writing in the Discipline

 A PROCESS FOR TECHNICAL

The writing process used by technical writers

has much in common with the writing process used
By the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
a. Recognize the different characteristics of writing. by any writer – an essayist, a novelist, a journalist,
b. Define technical writing. or songwriter. However, each genre brings its own
c. Identify the four processes of technical writing and their
underlying tasks. challenges. Along with considering audience,
d. Evaluate one’s writing process. purpose, and medium, technical writers must
e. Determine correct terms and concepts about technical
writing. spend the early stages carefully planning their
writing. In practice, the technical writing process
builds on the writing process with which you are
already familiar.

• Writing is Recursive. Writing is an act of creativity, and often it does not move forward smoothly from
one step to the next. Although the overall process does progress logically from planning to writing the
finished product, it is a backward-and-forward process between predictable stages; that is, it is
recursive, or circular, in nature.
• Writing Takes Time. When you write, you must allow time for the process.
• Writing is Different for Everyone. While the writing process does have stages, what people do in each
stage differs from one person to the next. Some people enjoy prewriting and planning and dislike revising.
Others enjoy the revising but are frustrated by the planning. Some people let the ideas grow in their
heads and write slowly with little revision.
TECHNICAL WRITING. Technical writing is a form of communication that professionals use to convey
information about specialized topics. A technical writer might create content to provide instructions or explain
technical concepts regarding environmental regulations, computer applications or medical procedures.

Processes of Technical Writing

PREWRITING
Prewriting refers to everything you do before writing an actual draft. Prewriting is the stage in the technical writing
process in which you define the direction and strategy for the content you're about to write.
1. Define your audience. Your intended audience determines the tone you should lean on while writing,
the level of background information you need to provide, the frequency with which you define terminology,
what you should cover and shouldn't, and the overall direction of the content.
2. Define the goal of your technical content. Every piece of content you write should have a goal;
otherwise, you'll write something that doesn't deliver any value because your points will be all over the
place. The goal of every piece of content can be thought of in two parts: the producer's goal and the
readers' goal.
a. Producer’s goal. Defining the producer's goal helps you understand why you or your company has
decided to write a particular piece of content. To define your producer goals, ask yourself these
questions:
• "As a person, why do I want to write this piece of content?"
• "As a company, why should we produce this piece of content?"

2 | Writing in the Discipline

 b. Reader’s goal. The readers' goal is why your audience should care about your content or even read
it. When users search for content, their goal is usually to either get a solution to a pain point or find
answers to a pressing question. To understand your readers' goal, ask yourself:
• "What are the pain points of my target audience regarding this particular topic?",
• "Regarding this particular topic, what are the pressing questions that my audience are looking for answers
to?"
3. Write an outline. An outline can be described as the barebones structure of your content. It allows you
to narrow down your ideas to the main points that you need to cover, ensuring that you deliver on the
goal of that specific piece of content without deviating.
4. Do your research. Research is a continuous process when writing. You must conduct research to gain
perspective. The level of research you do will reflect on how confident you'll feel about writing that piece
of content.

DRAFTING
After defining the basic structure and direction and reading up on helpful information, it's time to start writing.
1. Write the first draft. The goal of the first draft is to help you get all the ideas in your head onto paper
(within the constraints of your outline and target audience). Write down all the ideas that come to you in
relation to your outline. It doesn't have to look good or even be moderately ready for publishing.
2. Rewrite the first draft. The goal of this rewrite is to organize all the ideas that were jumbled together in
your first draft into a coherent and presentable format.

EDITING
1. Fine tune and polish. Now, this is the stage where you read through your more polished writing
sentence by sentence and try to clean it up even more. Unlike the rewriting, which is more concerned
with high-level coherence.
Here's a checklist of some things to do at this stage:
• Remove awkward phrases or ambiguous words that may make it hard for the reader to understand the
content.
• Make sure all links work
• Create smooth transitions between paragraphs and sentences.
• Run content through a grammar checker like Grammarly
• Run a plagiarism check using a tool like Grammarly or Unicheck.
• Break down longer sentences of more than 25 words into two.
• Break paragraphs into a maximum span of 6 lines.
• Clean out your sub headers. Make them as brief and as clear as possible.

REVISING
2. Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback from an extra pair of eyes (like a friend) if you're writing for yourself.
If you're working in a professional setting, you'd usually send this to your clients or superiors for feedback
and then try to incorporate their suggestions.
3. Publish or share. After you've incorporated feedback, it is now time to publish. You had typically transfer
the content from your drafting location (google doc, dropbox, e.t.c) to the publishing medium (code editor,
markdown files, CMS). Then share the excellent content you have written to social media so other people
can see it.
Source:

Worthington, D., and Sue, J., Technical Writing for Success, 3 rd Edition: Cengage Learning.2016

[Link]

3 | Writing in the Discipline