The article, Why Techies Need To Know How To Write, by Jeffrey Doughty, promotes the need for professionals, especially those in the technical field, to write clearly and accurately because they are potentially dealing with life and death situations. Doughty uses several examples, laced with humor, to establish this point. His examples of baking a cake and advancement of lawnmower technology underline the need for proper instruction from a managerial standpoint. In these examples, Doughty presents arguments against using jargon, and understanding the target demographic of the paper. Continuing with this thought, Doughty points out exceptions to the need for clarity above all. In the case of legal documents, there is an accepted style and use of words that may not be in line with modern English, thus limiting the writer's ability to be clear. Likewise, some documents, such as job postings, are created in technical jargon to weed out those unsuited to the task.
	These "top-down" instructions are complemented by Doughty's strong example of "bottom-up" communication in the 1986 disaster of the space shuttle Challenger. The example focuses on the inability of the workers, from the factory that built and tested the O-rings, to write a clear document explaining the possibility of 

disaster. The workers believed that NASA management would be able to read their technical reports "...and come to the same conclusion that they had." Due to poor writing, and an unclear message, NASA management did not understand the report and began the ill-fated launch.
	"Why Techies Need To Write Well" uses six real-life examples of good and poor technical writing to support the increase in awareness of  technical writing's integral role in the workplace. 
	The article is five pages long, and first appeared in the ninth edition of Exploring Language, (2001) published by Addison Wesley Longman.