Can You Understand What I Mean?  Writing for a Non-Technical Audience

When writing for a non-technical audience, a technical writer may find greater difficulty with writing an explanation for this audience than he/she did when first learning the information.  This was certainly the situation I found myself in as I completed an Assignment describing a technical process for a non-technical audience.  Throughout this process I found myself doubting whether or not the process I was writing about would be clear enough to the non-technical reader and yet, be a true reflection of the technical process.  While most of my professional research has surrounded new treatments or tools, I had to reach out to a friend who suffers from dental anxiety for feedback as a non-technical audience, which proved to be a useful strategy as I made a number of edits to the original draft.  By the end of the process, the focus on audience, sequential steps and simple language developed a different level of thinking and writing for me.  I encourage all writers to challenge themselves to a writing for the non-technical writer challenge and ask yourself at the end, did they understand what you meant?

In another exercise, I acted as a peer reviewer, which challenged my writing process once again.  I was constantly thinking about how to construct feedback in such a way that the author received it as constructive.  This was a difficult task ensuring the avoidance of language that has a tendency to negate previously stated positive comments including “however” and “but”.  I wanted the author to feel that the feedback was to be “considered” and so I “suggested”.  A difficult part of the process involved the late submission of the author allowing for less than 24 hours to review and complete the report.  As a reviewer, I had to switch my thinking to the task at hand, providing quality feedback, rather than the circumstances surrounding the submission.  This was just another example of being consciously aware of whether or not the audience understands the meaning behind the writing.

As a writer receiving feedback from a peer, the lesson from this part of the process surrounded how I, as the receiver of feedback, decide what to do with feedback from others.  There were pieces that I agreed with and made changes, but there were also other items that didn’t seem to fit the overall feel to the piece, so I didn’t apply those changes.

I share with you a critical lesson learnt through the work completed in this unit; whether you are a writer or receiving feedback, the question you should ask yourself is whether or not your audience will both understand the information as well as accept the information.  If at the end of a piece you can answer “yes”, then your audience will understand what you meant.