Sunday, November 20, 2011

Technical Communication Ch. 8

Chapter eight is titled, "Drafting Paragraphs, Sections, and Chapter."  It highlights the importance of grabbing your readers attention and transitioning smoothly from point to point.

Chapter eight encourages getting your readers attention by announcing your topic first.  It also writes about piecing your segments of information together to create more usability of your reader. "To understand any segment, whether a short paragraph or an entire communication, readers do the same things to determine what the topic is and figure out how its parts fit together."  With highlighting important parts and transitioning segments smoothly, you will be more likely to persuade your readers.  The chapter also states about using "top-down or bottom-up processing."  Top-down processing is to give your reader the overall picture before going into detail, and bottom-up processing is giving details first and the overall picture will be more visible by the end of the segment.

I agree that top-down processing is very important.  By listing the topic first, I feel you are more likely to grab your reader's attention and keep it.  By using bottom-up processing, it is possible that your reader will become lost and lose interest before the main point is revealed.  By having smooth transitions, it will help you reader understand when you are switching from one detail to the next.  They won't be confused in thinking you are still explaining points from the previous detail.

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