Logic Errors in Technical Writing

by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool

Logic is the magic key to your audience. It is logic that is essential to convince the readers that your conclusions are valid and true to life. If your logic has gaps, your text will hardly be effective and informative. But do we all remember what can ruin our logic?

Unreasonable Statement

Your statements should never be contrary to common sense and well-known facts. Otherwise, your text will be unreliable. But that is not what you want it to be, don`t you? Look at these examples:

• The boiling point of water is 10°C
• Los Angeles in one of the smallest towns in the US

Sound odd and funny, right? So, it is pretty obvious what kind of statements you should avoid in your writing. Some statements and facts may refer to a very specific sphere. Only experts will see your logic mistake. If you are not sure in your statement — never hesitate to ask the professionals who know everything about it. Your main task is to clarify, but not to mislead.

Sweeping Generalization

Sweeping generalization takes place when a conclusion is made on the basis of only one or a few instances of a phenomenon, though the phenomenon may have many more instances with other features. For example:

• It often rains in summer
• Oranges are always sweet

These statements ignore the fact that oranges can be sour, and summer can be quite dry. Sweeping generalization will not make your text credible. Be careful about that.

Personal Attitude

Technical documentation should always be impartial, reliable, and based on facts. Your personal attitude may be different from what facts, studies, statistics say. But it should never affect your documentation. For example:

• iPhone is better than Android

I will leave it with no comments =) I am sure you get it!

False Clause

You should always be sure that the statements you are mentioning in your document are closely connected to each other. If you mean that they have a cause-effect relation, make sure it really exists, or your readers are aware of this kind of relation between the statements. Example:

• Mrs. Smith did not feed her cat yesterday. No wonder we face such a drastic fall in the global economy.

A funny relation I would say))) But that is how you should not do in your documentation.

Biased Evidence

It is not ethical to use unreliable data, ignore, and omit relevant data, use only the data that contribute to specific conclusions. This will ruin the logic and credibility of your technical documentation. Can you imagine a situation that you need to find out what is more preferable in a group of people: apples or bananas. And you give the questionnaires only to people who prefer bananas. Will the results be accurate? I do not think so.

So, logic is a great thing when you know how to use it to achieve your goal. Hope this post will give you the idea of what is logical and what is not.

Have a nice day!

Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors