President’s Message:
Technical Communication and the School of Learning

by Debbie Kerr, President

I am torn this month about whether to write about my children or my sister-in-law. You may wonder why I would write about either, and what has this got to do with technical writing. Oddly enough, they both are connected to the field. My sister-in-law is taking her first university course, and it happens to be in English. She is upgrading her Registered Practical Nurse (RPN) certificate to an RPN diploma, and then will be entering into the Bachelor of Science – Nursing (BScN) program to get her nursing degree so she will be a Registered Nurse (RN). It all sounds complicated to me, and it is definitely a stretch outside her comfort zone. Having taken college courses all her life, the first university course is a scary one for her. Taking an English course, when you haven’t had to write in a business setting, is a whole other experience in itself.

On the other hand, my children both seem to be having a lot of tests lately. My one child is in high school, and someone seems to have finally got through to him about making study notes. He has discovered the fine art of tables, and realizes that studying can pay off. That is not to say that he always does well, but at least he knows that studying can make a difference.

So, please follow me on my journey as I strive to:

• Provide new writers with some basic writing tips
• Share my frustration that these basic skills are not taught to children and are not necessarily used by teachers
• Demonstrate that everyone can learn something new, and it is not always easy to teach what you know to someone you know

The art of studying

My younger son is 10 and sees no point in studying. He says it makes no difference. He figures he gets the same mark no matter what he does. I have explained to him if the mark is the same whether he studies or not, then he is not studying right. When I look at the notes he has in his book and I see how everything is presented, I think, “If technical communicators can teach without actually being in the classroom, why aren’t the same skills being taught to the people who are in the classrooms?” Both the students and the teachers need to learn how to present information.

To say that my son’s notes are cryptic is the biggest understatement of the century. The art of repeating the first part of a question in the answer has been lost on him. So when you are reading answers, and he has lost the question sheet, you have no idea what you are reading. I was never so excited to see a textbook in my life. However, textbooks are called textbooks for a reason. They are full of text. There are lots and lots of paragraphs, and very few bulleted lists, although, I was glad to see some good graphics. The test was about the Canadian government and, although no one truly understands it, the textbook did have a few good graphics of the federal and provincial levels of government. The only thing that I would have liked would have been visual clues to highlight the differences between the two levels of government.

Tables for quick comparisons

Just minutes before I sat down to write this article, I drew a table for my son and listed all the weather instruments he had to learn. His next test was about the weather. I then put three column headings in the table: “What Measured”, “Unit of Measurement”, and “Other”. Other was for additional information, like pilots can use a barometer as an altimeter to see how far they are above sea level. I thought this table would enable him to skim the information more quickly and let him more readily compare the instruments. Quite frankly, reading a paragraph about each instrument doesn’t let you see at a glance that this one is for wind direction; but this one is for wind speed; and this one is for atmospheric pressure. I was learning too as I was putting the information in the tables.

As my son completed the table, I learned that he had been listening to me all along, and had actually applied what I had taught him. He knew to present information in full sentences to provide full context to your readers. The table we had just created was filled with long flowing sentences so there were paragraphs of text in the table—not exactly easy to skim, or use as a quick study tool.

I have to now explain to my 10-year old that study notes are different than test answers. The word “notes” means short answers for skimming, and jogging your memory, and test answers are for showing your teacher you know the material. There’s a right and wrong place for everything—even sentences.

Visual clues to see relationships

I had also just finished skimming “Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides: A Case for Sentence Headlines and Visual Evidence” in the November issue of the Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, which emphasizes the importance of associating pictures with words and showing how they fit in the scheme of things. With this in mind, I had my son draw the water cycle and put in the bigger words that he had to learn, so that he could “see” where they fit into the cycle. Again, in his notes, they were just words and paragraphs. Suddenly, the words came to life. Transpiration, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection had hand-drawn pictures of land, plants, oceans, clouds, and rain with a series of arrows in between. I don’t know if he understands it better, but I can certainly see the big picture and what is happening where.

When I was in university, I had a selective photographic memory. I could tell you if the answer was on the left or right page of the book, and whether it was at the top or bottom of the page, but I couldn’t necessarily tell you the answer. If I knew then what I knew now, the visual clues would have been different, and I would have stood a better chance of seeing the actual answers instead of just seeing the location on a textbook page. I was missing one step in the studying process. Like so many other students, I read and highlighted faithfully, but I didn’t draw diagrams that would have helped me to see the relationships between pieces of information, and where they fit in the flow.

The art of writing

While my sister-in-law is not studying for a specific test, she is studying many things. While I cannot help her with the medical component, I am trying to help her with the English. I say trying, not because she isn’t a good student, but because sometimes I think I may make the poor girl’s head explode. It’s like the person who does a brain dump as a speaker, and you hate them because there is just too much information to deal with. Sometimes I worry that I will edit something she writes to death, and she will wonder if she has any writing skills at all. Sometimes I fear that I will try to explain too much. I feel like a tsunami about to wipe out an unsuspecting village. When you are used to editing like someone possessed, I just can’t hold it back. I am happy to say that the poor girl has survived, and both she and my brother are still speaking to me.

It’s hard to explain things by email and phone. I edit and comment, and then follow up with a phone call. The English course she is taking is also a distance course, but I don’t think the instructor is explaining things as clearly as he could. As a technical writer, I am always thinking of better ways of doing things.

Actively understanding the passive voice

As is the case with many new writers, my sister-in-law is struggling with the passive voice. The instructor focuses only on the what, not the why. He has my sister-in-law convinced that two-part verbs are all evil, resulting in stilted sentences structures because suddenly a lot of the verb tenses are wrong.

To help correct some of the sentences, I did the following:

Here are some clues the passive may be lurking in a sentence:

• There is no “doer”. If you look at the first original sentence in the table, you don’t know who gave the award. Once you rewrite it, the mayor is the “doer” because the mayor is taking the action of receiving it.
• There is a doer in the sentence, but it is preceded by the word “by”. The word, “by” is often a clue you have used the passive voice. In a sentence like the second one in the table, the name of the person who is taking the action is at the end of the sentence. If the “doer” is at the end of the sentence, they cannot be taking the action. They are passive. The subject of the sentence is the senior’s residence and not the local developer. If you are writing in the active voice, the doer is the subject.
• The structure of the verb is a clue, but may be too subtle. For example, in the second example, “is being built” is passive, but in the sentence, “She is being pig-headed,” the sentence is active. So if someone believes “being” is passive, then suddenly many sentences qualify as passive that actually are not. This is what happened to the word “was” for my sister-in-law, because “was given” is considered passive, she thought that any time the “was” appeared that the sentence was in the passive voice. For new writers, looking for a “doer” and the word “by” are better clues for identifying passive voice rather than looking for specific verb structures.
• The sentence is wordy. Passive sentences are longer and wordier than sentences written in the active voice, which is another reason they should be avoided. With the subject buried near the end of a sentence, it may not always be clear to your reader the point of your sentence.
• The sentence is unclear and lacks focus. Verbs in passive sentences are not as strong as those in sentences that are written in the active voice. For example, in the last sentence, “was built in 1897” is in the passive voice, so I just changed it to “Built in 1897”. I also made the hall the “doer” and gave it something active to do by having it “survive” demolition.

The art of surviving family

So I have managed to include both my sons and my sister-in-law in my article. The challenge to studying and writing is knowing when to draw the line so that everyone still likes each other at the end. The key I think is doing everything in small components – everything in moderation. I do short emails to my sister-in-law, and I allow my son to stop and play video games for a while, and then it’s back to the studying again.

Although life would be much easier if everyone had our technical communication skills when studying and writing, then there wouldn’t be the same need for us, because everyone could do everything themselves. However, silver lining aside, I still wish this problem wasn’t in our schools.

As an aside to surviving family, I want to wish you all a happy and safe holiday. I hope you enjoy any time that you get to spend with your family, and, if you are not, remember that everything, sometimes even family visits, are better in moderation.

About Debbie Kerr (President)

In the 20 years that Debbie has been writing documentation, she has worked in a variety of industries: government, retail, software, and insurance. She is currently employed at The Economical Insurance Group in Waterloo, where she has stepped out of her traditional role of writing user guides and help files, and now writes a variety of specifications.

Debbie has been a member of the STC since 1994 and has been a council member for many years. Most recently she was The Quill editor for two years.