“The Nature of the Narrator in Technical Writing”

“The Nature of the Narrator in Technical Writing” By: Lynn H. Deming Presented by: Anne Crace

Overview Technical authors should speak to their audience. Writing of this type is more personal than other types of writing and should be treated on a personal level. Most often, first person, active voice is the best choice of narrative style.

Be A Narrator! • Counter-intuitive to what has been taught in the past * It is “objective” to use third person * gives “professional distance” * helps with credibility • scholars now suggest first person is best for most technical documents • Written words tend to remove the author from the audience

Define Your Audience • Speak directly to your audience * Write as if they are in the room with you • Define who they are • Determine your Narrative tone of voice (imagine you are speaking to them). *Are they experts or novices? * How old are they? * Is the topic serious or humorous? • By including yourself in your writing, it becomes less impersonal

Different Types of Documents Require different narrative Perspectives • First Person * Correspondence (letters, memos, etc.) * Empirical Research Reports • Mixed Narrative * Proposals (first person-third person combination, predominantly active voice) * Mechanism and Process Definition (third person, active voice) * Multiple part documents • Active voice * Instructional Manuals

correspondence • First person is the only choice here. • active voice also • “I appreciate your support”…Not “Your support is appreciated” • It’s also polite!

Empirical Research documents • First person active voice allows an interesting and more personal perspective to research documents • allows a researcher to “own” their empirical data • Enables readers to identify with the writer

proposals • Proposals can be brief memos or multi-volume documents • For the former, use first person (just like correspondence) • For the latter, it is usually the choice of the project manager. (first person, third person combination is an option, but should predominantly be active voice

Manuals • These are user oriented and commands can be predominant • Issuance of instructions are common in these documents, a type of veiled first person. “Do this, do that…”, with an implied, “i”, giving the instructions, and “you” receiving them.

Mechanism and process descriptions • Third person, Active voice is appropriate for these types of documents. You are discussing a mechanism or a process. Focus should be on that topic. • Passive voice can be appropriate, if, for instance, the actor or subject is unknown, or could be anyone. Ex: “The subjects of the experiment were either given the drug or a placebo.”

Conclusion For most Technical writing, the tone should be somewhat personal, as if you are having a conversation with the audience, or speaking in front of them, as if on a stage. Doe s third person make sense for this? There are exceptions, but the main point of this article is to include yourself with the audience and vice-versa.

Questions?

“The Nature of the Narrator in Technical Writing”