ABSTRACT

Much has been written of late in the growing area of document design. The intention is to make written language formats more comprehensible for readers of technical documents. The key consideration in the structuring of inferential processes in written documentation is that potential readers or mechanical scanners are led through the specific cognitive steps that the document creator intended. But there are other language formats that convey technical information, and these also require planning in setting out the correct inferences to be made. The most common of these involve professional language delivered to nonprofessional listeners. We might best designate such instances as oral documentation, that is, the use of what seems to be ordinary discourse to transmit technical information, often without success.