By Dr. Jennifer Haber

This blog explores and debunks three common technical writing myths and encourages faculty, students, and administrators to consider the importance of technical writing training. While academic writing courses play a key purpose in a student’s development, technical writing courses offer additional practical skills that students can use in their professional lives: how to communicate clearly, concisely, and correctly in our global world.

As a professor and a mother, I have found myself in quite a few scenarios where I was asked to proofread papers for my daughters and a mix of their friends. Although this unpaid, unexpected side hustle began in their high school years, it has continued to their post-collegiate years. Now, though, instead of looking over their academic papers, I review their resumes, emails, and reports. After proofreading countless documents, I have noticed recurring mistakes, such as poor organization, lack of professional tone, and formatting errors. After I suggested corrections to what felt like the millionth awkward wordy expression, I began to reflect: Why do so many students struggle with these kinds of documents?

The answer started to become clear to me while teaching a technical writing class several years ago. Many students stated that they had never done “this kind of writing.” They shared that this was a “different kind of writing” than they had been taught previously. Being more concise, formatting for readability, and constructing bulleted items using parallelism were concepts entirely new to many of them.

From 2006 to 2015, bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields rose to a record high of 30% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded. With more and more students seeking degrees in health, medical sciences, and engineering, we’ve seen a rapid growth in students graduating with STEM degrees (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017). Although they may not realize, students need to be able to write in these fields. But it is not just STEM majors who need technical writing skills. Most employees send emails, write reports, and even create instructions. All students need to know how to communicate in their careers.

So, the next time a student, faculty member, or administrator states that just a few academic writing courses are enough, I would argue that technical communicators are necessary in the future, and strong writing skills set candidates apart from the competition and lead to innovation and success. I would also be ready to debunk some of the common myths of why students don’t think they need to learn technical writing.

Myth #1: I Already Know How to Write, so There’s No Point to Take Technical Writing.

Several years ago, my pre-medical college daughter was signing up for classes and saw that she was missing three credits of English, so I encouraged her to enroll in a technical writing class. Mouth agape and rolling eyes, my daughter proceeded to tell me “I already know how to write! I don’t need that!”

With trepidation, she took the course and practiced many of the skills I teach my own students: formatting documents, being more concise, thinking about audience and purpose. While she never told me I was right, I could feel it. She realized that she had a better sense of writing in the workplace and was more prepared for her future.

Similarly, in my own classes, I teach these skills as well as countless others. However, I also teach that technical writing isn’t just one thing. Technical writing is taking complex, useful information, breaking it down, and communicating it in ways that others will better understand.

TechWhirl, a website that provides information to students and young professionals, does a phenomenal job at breaking down the different uses of technical writing in the workplace that students may not realize involve technical writing. This list includes products such as:

• Product packaging
• Websites
• Simulations
• Policy documents
• Design documents
• And more! (Giordano, 2020)

While yes, a student may already understand “how to write,” technical writing is not just a writing class. It is a class where students learn how to effectively communicate information across a variety of different platforms. 

Myth #2: I Will Never Need to Write as an Engineer/Doctor/CEO.

I often hear students say: “I will not be writing in my career.” I especially hear these remarks from students who want to be engineers, doctors, or CEOs of companies. They profess that they “will be doing other things,” and writing should be done by other people. Usually, I let them think this for a few weeks. That is until I have them do a brief exercise, where they find out the types of writing they might do in their fields. After a recent class, here is what some of my students found:

• Healthcare professionals: emails, reports, research articles, clinical research trials
• Engineers: emails, instructions, project descriptions, proposals, design documents
• Software engineers: manuals, application programming interface (API) documentation, presentations, emails

These students also stated that communication was more important than they thought and found that if they don’t properly learn technical writing, many errors can happen that can affect their work. For instance, let’s say an engineer is writing a project proposal, but due to their lack of technical writing background, their report is unclear, littered with errors, and hard to read. This could lead to a struggle in getting projects approved, the inability to gain funding, and frustration among the team. Communicating clearly and effectively is necessary in all fields and will never go away. 

Myth #3: Creating Technical Documents is Easy.

Many people assume that writing a technical document is simple. However, anyone who has struggled trying to follow a badly written instructional guide knows it is not. Have you ever been stuck trying to fix a problem with a piece of technology, whether that be a phone, data, or code? Often, they will immediately go to Google and find a document that discusses what can be done to try to fix the error within the technology. However, the overly technical jargon, poor formatting, and confusing sentences can leave them scratching their heads, more confused than they were to begin with.

This highlights a common challenge that professionals face when attempting technical writing. Once a professional gets overly competent in their work, they can lose sight of the audience and purpose. As a result, they struggle to communicate and break down complex subjects into a digestible format for readers. Proper instruction to build these baseline skills during college is essential for preparing students for the workplace.

Students need technical writing. While academic writing is important, students need to be able to write emails, construct proposals, and write instructions. They need to communicate in a way that is clear and concise, without jargon and wordiness. They need to format for readability and clarity.

So, the next time a student, faculty member, or administrator considers which classes to take, teach, or schedule, I would remind them of the importance of technical communication in their lives, workplaces, and futures.

References

American Academy of Arts & Sciences. (2017). Humanities indicators: STEM fields growing among four-year college degree recipients. https://www.amacad.org/news/humanities-indicators-stem-fields-growing-among-four-year-college-degree-recipients

Giordano. C. (2020, June 28). What is technical writing? TechWhirl. https://techwhirl.com/what-is-technical-writing/