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The writing process consists of five steps, planning, drafting, revising,
editing, and proofreading.
The frustrating part of writing is that these five steps are not linear.
That is, at any step, you'll need to go back and rethink all five steps.
Remember to, that many of the documents you produce will never truly be finished.
Planning which can take more than a third of th
total time spent on the writing project.
It's critically important for
every document from an email message to book like manual.
Start by thinking about your audience, because you need to understand whom you're
writing to before you can figure out you need to say about the subject.
If you're lucky, you can talk with the audience before and
during your work on the document.
These conversations can help you learn what your reader has already know,
what they want to know and how they would like the information to be presented.
You can test out drafts making changes as you go everything.
If you cannot consult your audience while writing your document,
you still need to learn everything you can about your readers, so
that you can determine the best scope of organization and style for your document.
Then for
each of your most important readers try to answer the following three questions.
Who is the reader?
Consider such factors, education, job experience, their responsibilities,
skilled in reading English, cultural characteristics and personal preferences.
What are your readers attitudes and expectations?
Consider the reader's attitudes toward the topic in your message, as well as
the reader's expectations about the kind of documents you will be presenting.
Why and how would reader use your document?.
Think about what readers will do with the document.
List some quotes in their physical environment in which they will use it.
The techniques they will use it in reading it, and
the tasks they will carry out after they finish reading it.
You cannot start to write until you again state the purpose or
purposes of the document.
Ask yourself these two questions.
After my readers have read the document, what do I want them to know or do?
What beliefs or attitudes do I want them to hold?
A statement of purpose might be as simple as this, the purpose of this report
is to recommend whether the company should adopt a health-promotion program.
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in the final document you want to state it clearly how to help you
stay on track as you carry out the remaining steps.
Once you have a good idea of what you already know about your topic,
you must obtain the rest of the information you will need.
You can find and
evaluate what other people have already written by reading different books,
scholarly books, articles, websites and reputable blogs and discussion boards.
In addition, you might compile new information by interviewing experts,
distributing surveys or questionnaires, making observations,
sending inquiries and conducting experiment or different experiments.
Don't forget to ask questions and gather opinions from your own
network of associates, both inside and outside the organization.
For technical documents, it's best to turn to two kinds of people for
help, subject-matter experts and actual or potential users.
Subject-matter experts can help you determine whether your facts or
explanations are accurate and appropriate.
Both actual users of your existing document and prosperous users
of the next version of the document can help you see problems you and
other knowledgable readers do not notice.
How do you learn from subject matter experts, and from users, and
prospective users?
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Interviewing subject matter experts about the draft of the document.
Conducting focus groups to learn users or
prosperous users opinions about an existing or proposed document.
Uploading the document to an online writing space, such as
Microsoft SharePoint or Google Drive, and authorizing people to revise it.
It's important to revise old drafts whether it's special important to
revise draft documents that will be read and used by people of other cultures.
If your readers came from another culture
try to have your draft reviewed by someone from their culture.
That reviewer can help you see whether you have made correct assumptions
about how readers will react to your ideas and
whether you have chosen appropriate kinds of evidence and design elements.
Having to revise and make changes to its content and
organization, it's time for you to edit.
Editing is the process of checking the draft to improve its grammar, punctuation,
style, usage, word choice, and mechanics, such as use of numbers and abbreviations.
After editing,
you should proofread your document to make sure you typed what you meant to type.
Remember that the spell checker and grammar checker do not flag all errors.
Although some writers can proofread effectively on the screen,
other prefer to print a copy of the text.
These writers say that because the text looks different on the page
than it does on the screen, they're more likely to approach it with fresh eyes
as their eventual readers will and therefore more likely to see errors.
Regardless of whether you proofread on screen or on paper, the process is no fun.
But it is vital to produce in a clear,
well written document that reflects your high standards and
understands or underscores your credibility as a professional.
Elena BazanovaDirector of the Language Training and Testing Center
