The Shakespearean scholar G. B. Harrison has written that his most effective training in writing was as a staff captain in World War Ⅱ coordinating 72 miscellaneous military units. "It is far easier to discuss Hamlet’s complexes," he explained, "than to write orders which ensure that 5 working parties from 5 different units arrive at the right place at the right time equipped with proper tools for the job."
    Captain Harrison faced what every technical writer faces: the necessity of being clear and accurate, coherent and concise. This challenge and how to meet it, is the subject of this book.
    Technical writing is coming of age, and the following pages are directed to anyone interested in it. This includes technical and business students as well as writers in business, industry, the sciences, and the professions. But since the book’s premise is that technical writing is chiefly writing and only secondarily technical, it is addressed to anyone who writes in school or on the job.
    The emphasis on technical writing as writing may be more radical than it seems. Many texts treat technical writing as a separate genre, a distinctive category of writing, with "psychological", "linguistic", "sequential" and "functional" differences that distinguish it from other writing. But what distinguishes technical writing from other writing is none of these; rather, it is special knowledge, and often a special vocabulary. The authors of these texts perhaps confuse the sometimes obscure nature of technical material with the straightforward description of it. They may have forgotten that writing—any kind of writing—remains the selection and arrangement of words, whatever those words may be, whatever purpose they may have, whatever subject they may refer to.   According to the author, what distinguishes technical writing from other writings