Hands-on Technical Writing

Courses on Business Communications: General and Technical
  • Course:Hands-on Technical Writing
  • Course ID:TECHWRITE Duration:2 days Where: Your Office (7+ Persons)
  • Available as a private, customized course for your group at your offices or ours and in some cases as a WebLive(TM) class.

  • Download Course Description (PDF)

Course Outline

  • Introduction
    • Need for technical writing
    • Definitions
    • Technical writing process:  Step by step
    • Typical technical writing products
  • Audience Analysis
    • Identifying your audience’s “problem”
    • Classes of audience
    • Intuitive analysis
    • Interviewing representative members of your audience
    • Selecting audience analysis methods
  • Research
    • Searching the literature
    • Interviewing subject matter experts
    • Using hands-on experience and demonstrations
    • Selecting research approaches
  • Structuring Your Document
    • The executive summary
    • The news reporter’s questions
    • Information chunking
    • Bottom-up structures
    • Top-down structures
    • Sidebars
    • Selecting a document structure
  • Evaluating Results
    • Evaluating clarity
    • Evaluating correctness
    • Evaluating consistency
    • Evaluating completeness
    • Evaluating appropriateness
    • Reporting evaluation results
  • Editing
    • Structural editing
    • Content editing
    • Copy editing
  • Wrap-up:
    • Course recap
    • Highlights from students’ perspective
Course Overview

Course in a Nutshell

The need to use the written word to communicate clearly is part of the very fabric of every product- and service-oriented organization.  User guides, help files, white papers and journal articles, advertising copy, specifications, training manuals and instructor guides, and proposals are just some of the examples of documents that require in-depth research, thoughtful structuring, and judicious editing to suit the needs of a specific situation.

In this course, you will study the step-by-step process for producing effective business documents.  You will learn the art and craft of the writing discipline that can be applied to virtually any type of technical or business writing.  You will go away from this course having acquired a tool kit for creating documents that are clear, correct, consistent, complete, and appropriate to their audience and purpose.

 

Customize It!

  • Are you concerned with specific types of writing projects, such as producing user manuals or instructional material?  We can tailor the course to focus on the class of documents of interest to you.
  • Are you interested mostly in the editing of writings created by others?  We can turn the course into an in-depth study of the editing process and techniques

 

Learn How To

  • Analyze the audience for a specific writing project
  • Conduct thorough research to ensure accurate writing
  • Evaluate draft material to ensure that it is clear, correct, consistent, complete, and appropriate
  • Edit draft material to satisfy audience needs

 

Audience / Prerequisites

Aimed At

Engineers, designers, managers, and other professionals with technical writing responsibilities.