Blog post #3
My gap in the knowledge is more of a lack of update. I'm focused on common errors in technical writing and originally thought to compile a list for students from existing lists. However, the most recent list of common errors I found was from 1982, and it was based on a list from 1975, I believe. The sources I found focused on technical writing errors and how to correct them, but they were very much from the perspective of "common sense" rather than concrete gathered data. For example, participants in multiple sources were handed a list of errors and asked questions like how much each error bothered them, how the tone of the document was, and similar things. What I want to do is conduct a massive study analyzing current student work and come up with concrete data on what modern technical writing errors are. For example, maybe students don't know how to automatically format section headers (which is also an accessibility issue). However, while this study will fill the ...