Module 8 Act 1

Procedure for Writing Instructions

The Importance of Writing Instructions Clearly

1. Safety: Poorly written instructions may cause injuries which may result in damage claims or lawsuits. To insure a person’s safety instructions must be written:

• Accurately
• Consistently
• Thoroughly
• Clearly
• Carefully organized

2 Efficiency: Businesses would not run smoothly if employees had no idea what and how to do their jobs through proper written instructions and procedures.

3 Convenience: Instructions written clearly makes your customers jobs easier such as assembling purchased items properly.

Process of Writing Instructions

• Assess who your audience will be and what their needs are: Depending on the audience will determine how much details must be supplied.

• Plan your steps: Research the job before you start to write to become familiar with the reason for doing something, parts and tools required to do it, the steps required to complete the job, the ultimate result and any potential risks or dangers.

• Do a trial run: Perform a trial run to verify all steps that were taken. Try to make each step as simple as possible to prevent a customer from getting confused. Ultimately each step should be complete, sequential, reliable, straight forward and easy for your customer to perform.

• Write and test your draft: Once you produce your first draft have someone perform the job and observe that person to see where they run into difficulty such as missing a step or just can not complete.

• Revise and edit: Depending on your observations, revise your draft to make the difficult steps clearer, easier and retry. Check to see if possibly that step may be broken down into easier steps to perform.

• Use visuals: If at all possible, use visuals to help the customer to understand what needs to be done. Visuals can help to simplify a process, identify location or size of parts, show relationship of components and identify right and wrong ways of doing it.