There are four categories of instructions.
- Actions/behavior of personnel
- Assembly of objects or mechanisms
- Operation of equipment
- implementation of a process
Other things that must be considered is if your instructions need to be accessible to a broad range of users who may come from different cultures. There are two things to remember if you are up against this type of audience. First, you must provide instructions translated into multiple languages. Second, you must use visuals that are likely to be understood in many cultures. Another thing to consider is the wording of the instructions. We learned this part from our bilingual assignment. The wording must be free from words that may bring complication to the translation phase of writing.
As technology hits the instruction filled world we live in it has also gone electronic. Many companies have gone with both print and electronic documentation. Now more and more you will see only electronic documentation and help systems available on the web.
After constructing an instruction document it may help to go through this list and make sure all or most of the elements are included.
- Purpose with a title and goal statement or objective
- Necessary components: Parts lints, equipment list, materials list
- Accurate chronology, with factors
- Clear, direct wording and consistent terminology
- Accurate, relevant details
- Rationale
- Stylistic and grammatical conventions
- Warnings and cautions
Another important aspect of instructions is for safety. There are inherent risks associated with some instructions, because of this instructions writers must provide users with sufficient notices about cautions, warnings, and dangers. Symbols and colors are also helpful to users.
By: Tyler Deike and Anders Rydholm
9 comments:
I feel that chapter 21 was a good review chapter for our instruction and bilingual assignments. When I was reading it I was preparing the chapter to the instructions I wrote. There were a lot of similarities between the two, yet I still found it informational.
I like how the book discussed analyzing your audience, this is something I forget to do all the time, but I'm learning! Reading this chapter has hopefully prevented some unfortunate people from having to figure out my instructions!
This chapter was useful in that after completing assignments that apply to these topics namely the instruction sheet assignments, how to correctly prepare those and many other things. Like becca said it seemed to be more of an overview/conclusion to the book but yet very informational too.
Chapter 21 was talking about how to prepare instructions and manuals. Most instructions are wrote because they provide a personnel safety and performance for people,they provide a summary of a product, and it also provides the process of how a product is developed. The chapter also talked about genre and how to use it.
The chapter does a great job of discussing how a person must analyze the audience to whom they are trying to reach. While being in college and being involved in giving presentations it is important to take this discussion seriously to be a more effective presenter.
Chapter 21 is an excellence source for instruction writing. I thought Burnett's explanation of aliterate made perfect sense. I find it very common that people choose not to read instructions, that the visuals involved become even more important. I also thought her comments and suggestions on what paper instructions should be printed on was a very important note and is sometimes overlooked.
I found it very interesting how to write instructions that reach your audience. I am guilty of not reading the instructions that come in the package. Pictures and genre can play a big role in the audiences understanding of what you are trying to get across.
This chapter was interesting to read after creating our bilingual assignments. It gave me a review and more information on instructions previous to reading this chapter. The main focus on instructions is the audience. You need to analyze the audience before creating the instructions and by doing this the instructions are more easily read and understood. One main point in analyzing your audience is different languages. We got to experience this by doing our bilingual instruction assignment. Another aspect of instructions is pictures to aid in the understanding of the directions. The pictures need to accompany the instructions and understood by every type of audience. Again, overall this chapter was a good review and also provided more information that I had known before.
As others have said, this chapter was helpful when completing our instruction assignment. It made me think of other instructions I have read/skimmed over...visuals are great at times I just want an overview of the task at hand.
There are a lot of things to be considered when writing instructions...what may make sense to me may not make sense to someone else. For our instructions, I had someone who had NEVER text try my instructions and make suggestions.
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