Cultural Influences on Technical Manuals

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2002

Cultural Influences on Technical Manuals

Thomas L. Warren Oklahoma State University

Abstract

Budget and time constraints often force technical communicators to produce manuals that are less than affective. One reason is the time they take to analyze their document's users. Normally, user analysis involves demographic, or organizational, or psychological approaches or combinations. Rarely will they evaluate the culture of the user and determine what that means for developing the document. Typically, localization will edit the document for cultural elements, but that is an expensive and time-consuming process. This article discusses the cultural elements in developing a document and shows, through a comparison of two mythical cultures, how the document will differ when organized for those two cultures.