Presenting Technical Data to a Non-Technical Audience by Francis Hopcroft;

Author:Francis Hopcroft; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Momentum Press
Published: 2019-10-12T21:00:00+00:00

5.7.2. WRITTEN PRESENTATIONS

Written presentations, such as in reports or essays, are far easier to do well than oral presentations because there is time to rethink how things are being said, to adjust wording for the audience knowledge, and to ensure that the story line is cogent, smooth, and easily followed. The use of graphics and visual aids is similar to an oral presentation, except that written presentations are printed, rather than being flashed onto a large screen. This means that there is seldom any excuse for not carefully reading and rereading a written document prior to submittal. It is helpful if more than one person reads every document, since it is axiomatic that people see what they expect or want to see in their own writing, while others will miss nuances of intonation that would be obvious in an oral presentation but are lost in the written word. Punctuation helps with overcoming this problem a lot when writing, of course, but it is still common to overlook poor punctuation when reading one’s own writing.

A significant downside to written presentations occurs when a larger audience is being addressed, in that color printing is very expensive relative to black and white printing. If only a few, or even a few dozen, copies of the written work are being prepared, it is not overly expensive to add a few color graphics and visuals to aid in the discussions. For significantly larger printings, particularly when those printings are being distributed at no cost, color printing may become prohibitive.

The major problem associated with black and white printing of color-based graphics is the loss of detail. Graphs, for example, that contain several lines of data, particularly overlapping lines of data, become much more confusing when all the lines are the same color and shape. It is important, therefore, to assume that any written document will eventually be copied in black and white, regardless of how much color is used in the original. Charts and graphs should use a different shape, such as a dashed line, a line of dots, a dash with a dot between each dash, or other options, to distinguish the lines when they are printed in black and white. This also helps those who may be color-blind to also understand the work even if they are reviewing the color original. Further discussion of the use of colors is included in Chapter 6 in regard to PowerPoint and other slide show programs. Those concepts will generally apply, as well, to the written word.

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