Writing in the IT Field

While IT writing may include white papers and project reports, much of it is technical documentation or user training material. Therefore, students must learn to structure and organize their writing. In a rapidly evolving field, students must also become accustomed to reviewing innovative research in technical, peer-reviewed journals and must develop powers of analysis and synthesis.

Writers in the field of information technology should strive for brevity and clarity. In the words of AIT professor Mike Lyons, the style should be a happy medium between “bullets” and a “Victorian novel.” There needs to be adequate explanation, without excessive wordiness. Since IT practitioners often write for a global audience, they should write in short, action sentences and avoid idiomatic expressions. They need to use language that might be sexist or culturally insensitive. Indeed, as IT writers are often members of teams, the adoption of simple prose makes the integration of documents easier. Some experts advise the use of “e-prime ” format to encourage consistency and simplicity. Further, IT writers must use concrete examples and use precise language to convey meaning effectively.

Technical documents must often be illustrated with charts, diagrams, and hyperlinks. Due to the integrative nature of the discipline, references and citations should be included. Dates and DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) should be used whenever possible to help track content. As technical documents are often searched and indexed, appropriate word choice and labeling becomes critical. In web documents, use of meta data and “semantic web” tags will facilitate information retrieval.

IT practitioners need to understand the different types of language appropriate in different contexts. The language in a white paper or project report is more formal than the language used in email or an instant message. Students need to be aware of the risk of misunderstandings that can arise from less formal language. Finally, as IT practitioners are often “translators of technology,” they must learn to adapt their language to the technical level of the reader.

References:

G. Blake and R.Bly, The Elements of Business Writing. Longman, 1991.

A. di Iorio, F. Vitali, “From the writable web to global editability,” Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia. Proceedings of the sixteenth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, Salzburg, Austria, 2005: 35 – 45.

V. Pine and M. Barrett, “What kinds of communication are required on the job?” Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges. Volume 21 , Issue 2 (December 2005) Pages: 313 - 321: 2005.

“The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Education," http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/ (last update August 25, 2007, accessed 9/19/2007).