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English, Communication Skills, and Employability—are three complementary
entities that function as the watchwords of the contemporary global scenario. The
transition and transformation of English into Englishes due to geographical necessity is a
common story now. With technological advancements and its concomitants, English has
come to lose its erstwhile colonizer's status and dons a different mantle. English was
indeed once an instrument of communication. It is still so, but the language has been put
under the microscope. The use of English has become prominent and thus has become
a linguistic tool kit—a skill-oriented phenomenon. In this metamorphosis, there is a
breed of Englishes, from technical English and business English to legal English. English
has thus come to take on an endless list of prefixes. This streamlining has engendered
an interesting variety of Englishes to meet the endless demands of employability.
With English ruling the roost worldwide, there are spheres that operate more with
English at its center. These include technical writing, copyediting and copywriting.
Our
concern here is with technical writing. In the present day academic sphere, the term
`technical writing' is quite familiar. At the same time there
also seems to be a halo of haziness around it. People seem to ponder too much on the `technical' in technical writing.
One fails to understand that technical writing is a part of one's life. It is a
specialized kind of writing in a specialized field. The root word from Greek
`techne', which means `skill', explains that this involves writing for a special purpose. Technical writing
has often come to be associated with the world of computers and machines. The other
side of the issue is that all of us engage in technical writing when we write in a
special context using a certain format. For example, we write official leave letters, a letter
to the bank authorities, explaining or requesting or whatever. |
