Re: The place of TW theory in real life

[Steven Brown <stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Carolee,

I love theory, so I'd be happy to put on a wig and
take your place in class! Just tell me when and where.

Theory gets a bad rap because there's rarely
discussion about how to apply it. There's a lot to be
gained from a strong familiarity with and
understanding of theory (and I would extend that to
academic research as well) and even more to gain from
finding ways to apply it. Look through any issue of
STC's "Technical communication" and you'll find
several academic articles which don't seem to be
applicable to our day-to-day work. But many of them
are.

For example, a 1999 issue had an article titled, "The
Influence of Semantics and Syntax on What Readers
Remember." It included references to statistic terms
such as standard deviation, Chi-square, and p value,
as well as to grammatical elements that we don't think
about most of the time. (Anyone remember what a
relative clause is?) After I read the article,
however, I realized that, if the research is correct,
I could apply its findings to my writing so that my
users better retain information. 

Here's another example. A month ago I contributed to a
discussion here about descriptive versus prescriptive
approaches to technical writing. Theoretical?
Definately. But I was able to use that information to
better understand the choices that I make every day --
whether to use 'who' rather than 'whom', whether to
'appear' or 'display'.

I would encourage you throughout the theory class to
constantly ask the professor (and yourself), "What are
the implications of this or that theory to Steven
Brown out there in the real world?" Or, "How do
technical writers use this information to do their job
better?" That's how you'll find value in the class.

Steven Brown
Senior Technical Writer


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