Abstract

Because they may interpret writing too narrowly as a means of displaying data, rather than as communication, some technical professionals produce documents exhibiting particular writing faults. For example, they may not write with a full consciousness of words' meanings in context, or they may fail to assess readers' knowledge levels accurately. Additionally, they may write too sequentially, forget to include clear references, or fail to use vivid language in their reports. Although all these errors derive from shared underlying attitudes towards language, the first evidence a reader is likely to encounter that something has gone wrong in a document is a misuse of such little words as “the,” “this,” “with,” “is,” “have,” and “then.”