"Technical communication" refers to the processes through which a business gathers, produces, and shares information critical to its operations. Businesses maintain employee operational structures and engage customers or clients and therefore must move in-field information. Employees need information to complete their tasks; senior executive staff needs information about operations; up and down the network chain of responsibilities, information, often highly specialized, must be moved among departments. In addition, customers must understand products, product functions, as well as the network of associated customer services that are available. This is all technical communication.
Given the advent of digital communications and the reality that any network now operates within a vast virtual platform, access to that virtual data reservoir depends on employees across the board being confident in usage and trained to use the computer resources effectively, efficiently, correctly, and quickly. That relies on someone in the company serving as the contact to facilitate computer usage, helping and directing employees into the correct procedures and overseeing any facility crisis.
The burgeoning field of technical communication, however, explores a far wider dynamic. Specialists within a network must be able to share information, insights, perspectives, ideas, and opinions clearly and efficiently with those at that level of expertise. Employees at differing levels of expertise must be able to understand and follow instructions, directives, work protocols, and policies. Technical communication, however, is more than that. The reality is that any business must deal with specialized information moving outside a network chain in which a worker/employee simply cannot assume any level of expertise.
Customers and clients, whether face to face or through the company’s websites, must be engaged carefully to ensure that critical information they are seeking can be shared accessibly and usefully. In this case, the person with the information must choose one of three communication patterns: (1) The person can talk at the client, bombarding them with specialized information, heavy doses of jargon, and generally verbally assault them; (2) the person can talk down to the client, using low-level vocabulary, basic sentence patterns, and clichés and conversational slang that makes the client feel that they are being condescended to; or (3) in the best situation, the person can talk with the client, exchanging information between intelligent adults one of whom is simply lacking critical bits of information.
For technical communication specialists, any sentence has the sole purpose of moving content (information) to a targeted audience with specific needs and expectations. Take an example in which a supervisor informs an immediate superior of the impact of a company investment: "The new power staplers that were recently purchased by our company have caused an increase in our worker productivity." From the perspective of a technical communication specialist, the problem with the sentence is that it uses too many words—most of which do not contribute relevant information. If the power staplers are new, it is redundant to point out that they were recently purchased; workers are the productivity, and the only productivity of interest is "our" productivity. Technical communication values clarity: "The new power staplers have increased productivity" describes the situation accurately and concisely in only seven words.
Technical communication specialists create copy intended to be moved, intended to be used, intended to be circulated. Technical communication aims at achieving one of three defined purposes: (1) to inform an audience—that is, move specialized information the audience does not have but needs; (2) to persuade—that is, to use language to move a client/customer to follow a course of action beneficial to the company; or (3) to instruct—that is, to help an audience follow and complete successfully a set of procedures or steps. Unlike formal academic writing, which is expected to offer page after page of unbroken type, technical communications use "eye relief"—that is, graphic design devices that maximize the white space on a page—strategically placed illustrations, and fonts, color, and typeface, which highlight information and direct information flow for the reader. Concise information presented in chunks is more easily digested and enables its audience to skim or pick out desired bits, thus processing the communication quickly" (Source: EBSCO, 2021).