Textual Completeness
Have you ever tried to give someone instructions on how to do something that seems so easy to you but the other person just doesn't understand your directions? The first time I asked my son to vacuum his room and gave him instructions on how to use the vacuum, I thought the task would be an easy one. Thirty minutes later, he still hadn't figured out how to turn the vacuum on.
Sometimes, what we consider to be obvious isn't so apparent to someone else. That's why it's important in technical writing to make sure that you provide enough detail in your document that the document is self-explanatory. Textually complete documents provide the audience with the exact amount of information they need to complete a task or understand a topic.
To ensure textual completeness, writers should:
- Proofread the document
- Check for usability
- Know the intended audience
Once you've finished writing the document, you should always proofread the document yourself to catch any grammatical mistakes. However, it is equally as important to have someone else proofread the document, especially if the document explains a process. Another reader can more easily determine if you've accidentally left a step out that seemed obvious to you. They can also check to see if you have provided enough details without overwhelming the reader with too much information.
Next, check the usability of the document. When examining usability, ask yourself these questions:
- Is the document easy to understand? Make sure that the language you use is clear and written using terms the general public can comprehend.
- Is the information engaging? Technical documents aren't going to be the most entertaining items you read, but they should still be written in a way that keeps the reader's attention. Engagement can be achieved by keeping the document concise and breaking the information into small chunks.
- Is the document effective? For a document to be effective, it must contain enough information for an audience to act or to make an informed decision. Consider answering the 5W questions - who, what, when, where, and why - in addition to asking how so that you provide all the necessary information the reader needs.
Finally, know your intended audience. By understanding who will likely read the document, you can evaluate whether the document has met the needs of the audience. Will the audience be able to understand the language you've used? Will the audience understand the purpose of the document? Have you made it clear what you want the audience to do as a result of reading the information? By understanding your audience, you are able to anticipate and answer any potential questions there might be about the document.
Visual Completeness
My daughter recently tried to put together a gingerbread house. Unfortunately, the directions she received had a picture of a house that was different from the pieces she received in the box. Since all of the drawings went with the pieces that weren't included in our box, my daughter could not figure out how to put the house together, despite having written directions. We ended up just eating the pieces!
Sometimes, words are not enough to provide understanding. Most people in today's society are visual learners. They need to see how something works, not just read about it. This means technical writers need to go beyond just looking at the text of a document. They must evaluate how the document looks visually to determine if it is complete. To achieve visual completeness, ensure that you've included graphics and tables when necessary and that you've provided visual cues for easy reading.
If you had to create a document explaining how to use a camera, would it be enough just to write directions? If you referenced the shutter release or the aperture, would the general public understand what you were talking about? Probably not. When words are not sufficient enough to convey an idea, a graphic can help communicate an idea by allowing the audience to see what they're reading about, so they can more easily apply the knowledge.
If a document includes values, measurements, and other data, consider creating a table, chart, or graph to help the reader better understand how the data relate to one another. For example, if you are comparing how many people voted in an election based on the income of those people, putting the data in a bar graph allows the reader to quickly see trends in the data.
Finally, when looking over your finished document, make sure that you have provided visual cues for your reader. Today's audience wants to be able to scan over a document, quickly determine what the document will address, and find specific information in the text, which is hard to do when the information provided does not include visual cues.
Consider adding some of the following visual cues to break a document into smaller, easier to comprehend chunks:
- Include headings that indicate the topic of a group of paragraphs
- Use bullet points to list several pieces of important information
- Bold, italicize, or highlight words or definitions that have important meaning to your message
Lesson Summary
Achieving completeness in technical documents goes beyond just finishing the writing. Achieving completeness involves making sure that the text is usable and accurate, and that important information can be quickly found and understood.
To ensure textual completeness, writers should:
- Proofread the document
- Check for usability
- Know the intended audience
Additionally, to ensure visual completeness, writers should add graphics, tables, and graphs to help explain complex information, and use headlines, bullet points, and other visual cues to help break the information into smaller chunks.
Learning Outcomes
Once you've completed this lesson, you should be able to:
- Identify the importance of textual completeness in technical documents
- Explain how to ensure textual completeness
- Describe the importance of and ways to add visual completeness to a document
