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As a technical author, your credibility is paramount. You already know it’s essential to do no matter you want to to guard it. Therefore the significance of making certain your writing is acceptable to your readers, correct, clear, and as simple as doable in your readers to comply with your argument and are available to the identical conclusion.
Technical writing covers a variety of actions: this text will notably assist report writers. Please keep in mind that this text is about writing traps, not the content material.
Not surprisingly, the primary entice to keep away from is plagiarism.
- Plagiarism, ‘the appropriation or imitation of one other’s concepts and method of expressing them, to be handed off as one’s personal’, is rarely acceptable. It is simply not value doing, and has penalties.
- Copyright infringement will tarnish your skilled credibility and authority. Copyright, ‘the unique proper, granted by law for a sure time period of years, to make and eliminate copies of, and in any other case to manage, a literary, musical, dramatic or inventive work’, protects creators from unauthorised copying of all or a considerable a part of their work. Copyright legal guidelines differ between nations, so ensure you perceive what the law in your nation permits you to do. If you want to have permission from the writer, do it – do not simply hope you will get away with it.
- Failure to acknowledge the sources of associated materials you’ve got used will, on the very least, reduce the respect of your colleagues. And bear in mind to verify that your citations are appropriate, and written accurately – proper all the way down to using commas and full stops. At all times confer with your type information if you want to refresh your reminiscence.
- Utilizing generalisations can result in readers questioning your authority. Phrases like ‘everybody is aware of’, ‘everyone knows’, ‘analysis suggests’ are greatest prevented as they’ll trigger readers to surprise in the event you actually do know what you are saying.
- Lack of consideration of ease of studying could make the duty of studying your technical data that a lot more durable. Usually, your readers dislike (amongst different issues) giant chunks of textual content or overcrowding of the web page; spelling, grammar or punctuation errors; a lot of phrases when a graph, desk or illustration might inform your story extra simply; lack of headings or different strategies (desk of contents, bolding of key phrases, bullet or numbered lists) to information them by way of your doc; use of jargon or technical phrases that are not adequately defined; lack of consistency in paragraph spacing, caption type, use of shortened kinds, font choices, and so forth.
Having written your report, it is time to verify that you have not fallen into any of those traps. Reread, and, if vital, rewrite, add lacking citations, alter the format. Ask a colleague to evaluation it. Ask somebody who’s not been concerned with the challenge if they’ve any difficulties studying and understanding your report. Verify spelling, grammar, and punctuation; evaluation consistency.
And in the event you can afford it, rent an editor to offer it its last polish.
Then be assured that your professionalism and credibility haven’t been lessened by your writing.
Definitions of ‘plagiarism’ and ‘copyright’ from The Macquarie Concise Dictionary, third version, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1998.
