Guidelines

For this assignment, you may choose to write for a general or professional audience: a general audience might consist of your classmates and instructor; a professional audience might consist of co-workers in the technical workplace or new majors in your program (e.g., new mechanical engineering majors). If you write to a professional audience, identify this audience in your introduction; otherwise, I will assume that you are writing for a general audience.

Write a 3-5 page single-spaced technical description that will enable your readers to understand the features, functions or stages of an object, phenomena, or process. Your description should have an effective introduction, well-organized features, functions or stages body sections and appropriate visuals (at least three) and a conclusion.

Topic. Choose your topic carefully: even for a general audience, the topic should be specific, technical, and appropriately complex. Instructions on simple topics will not be as high as descriptions of more complex and sophisticated topics. Consider drawing a topic from your program or major to develop a description for a professional audience.

Research. You will need to conduct research to find or develop useful visuals pictures and drawings, figures, tables and graphs, screenshots, flowcharts, etc. for your instructions. All visuals must be properly cited and documented in APA style.

Format. Use headings to label sections; use numbers or bullets to list the steps within sections. Use one step per action. Use parallel structure for headings and steps. Write in imperatives and active voice.

Develop a usable page design to integrate instructions and visuals. For example, you may decide to use a page design that has two or more columns. In a two-column design, you might put all of your steps in the left-hand column and all of your accompanying visuals in the right-hand column. Alternatively, you might mix both text and visuals in both columns.