Form and document creation: Difference between revisions

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==The Structure and Organization==

When a technical communicator is creating a form or document, it is vital that hethey or she payspay close attention to structure and organization. Structureas and organizationthese are the venuesmeans throughthat whichallow thevisualization communicator can make visualizationto work in a form or document.

===Functional Analysis===

In order to design a form or document, the writer should understand and evaluate the different constraints in the rhetorical situation; this is called functional analysis.<ref name=lm387>Lentz & Maat, 387.</ref> One of the biggest components in analyzing a form or document is to determine the communicative purpose of the form or document.<ref name=lm387/> Leo Lentz and Henk Pander Maat, an associate professor and a senior lecturer at the University of Utrecht, break down communicative purpose into four elements:<ref name=lm388>Lentz & Maat, 388.</ref>

:#intended communicative effect: the intended effect should fall into one of three categories; “a"a cognitive change in the mental state of the reader, who learns something or forms a particular attitude, a change in the reader’sreader's behavior, such as handling a machine or buying a product, or a change in the social reality as a result of the collective behavior of readers, such as the sale of a product".”<ref name=lm388/>

:#topic: this is based on the readersreader's needs, since the reader is the one expected to act on the information.<ref>Lentz & Maat, 389.</ref>

:#target group: this should be a specific group described either by demographic variables or communicative predispositions.<ref>Lentz & Maat, 390.</ref>

:#organizational goal: this is the change that should occur in every individual reader.<ref>Lentz & Maat, 391.</ref>

After analyzing the communicative purpose, the technical communicator can design thea form or document inthat order towill match the requirements and meet the expectations for the document.<ref>Lentz & Maat, 397.</ref>

===Explicit Structure===