Five Ways Your Professional Credibility Is Diminished By Bad Writing



As a technical writer, your credibility is paramount. You recognize you need to do whatever you want to to protect it. Hence the significance of making sure your writing is suitable on your readers, correct, clear, and as smooth as feasible for your readers to observe your argument and are available to the equal conclusion.

Technical writing covers a extensive variety of activities: this article will mainly help file writers. Please bear in mind that this newsletter is about writing traps, not the content material.

Not fantastically, the number one entice to avoid is plagiarism.

1. Plagiarism, ‘the appropriation or imitation of every other’s ideas and way of expressing them, to be befell as one’s very own’, is in no way desirable. It’s just no longer well worth doing, and has results.
2. Copyright infringement will tarnish your expert credibility and authority. Copyright, ‘the exclusive proper, granted by using law for a positive term of years, to make and put off copies of, and otherwise to manipulate, a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work’, protects creators from unauthorised copying of all or a significant part of their work. Copyright laws differ between nations, so make sure you understand what the regulation in your usa allows you to do. If you want to have permission from the author, do it – do not simply desire you’ll get away with it.
3. Failure to renowned the resources of related cloth you’ve got used will, at the least, reduce the respect of your colleagues. And bear in mind to test that your citations are accurate, and written successfully – right right down to the use of commas and complete stops. Always confer with your style manual in case you want to refresh your reminiscence.
4. Using generalisations can cause readers thinking your authority. Phrases like ‘everybody is aware of’, ‘we all realize’, ‘studies indicates’ are best averted as they are able to cause readers to wonder in case you without a doubt do realize what you’re pronouncing.
5. Lack of consideration of ease of analyzing can make the challenge of analyzing your technical records that lots harder. Generally, your readers dislike (among different matters) massive chunks of textual content or overcrowding of the page; spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes; plenty of words whilst a graph, table or instance ought to inform your tale more easily; lack of headings or different strategies (table of contents, bolding of key words, bullet or numbered lists) to manual them thru your document; use of jargon or technical phrases that are not accurately explained; lack of consistency in paragraph spacing, caption fashion, use of shortened paperwork, font selections, etc.

Having written your report, it is time to test that you’ve now not fallen into any of those traps. Reread, and, if necessary, rewrite, add missing citations, alter the layout. Ask a colleague to study it. Ask someone who’s not been involved with the task in the event that they have any problems analyzing and knowledge your file. Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation; evaluation consistency.

And if you can come up with the money for it, hire an editor to present it its very last polish.

Then be assured that your professionalism and credibility have now not been lessened by means of your writing.

Definitions of ‘plagiarism’ and ‘copyright’ from The Macquarie Concise Dictionary, 0.33 version, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1998.