Essentials of Technical Writing

Whether you work with computers, chemicals, clients or cogs, as a technical writer you have different needs than the casual business writer. This workshop will take you beyond the basics of business writing to help you prepare:

  • Correspondence: memos, emails, letters
  • Media releases
  • Reports and proposals
  • Instructions and manuals
  • Presentations and powerpoints

Course level: Beginner / Intermediate

Required Book: None required

Workshop Length: 6 weeks

Tuition: $225.00 ($202.50 for VIP)

Start Date: View Essentials of Technical Writing Course Schedule

Course Structure
The workshop will consist of six one-week sessions. Each session will include an online lecture (text based), practice exercises, and a writing assignment. Your instructor will review and privately provide feedback on these assignments. Student work can also be posted for group review and feedback. Throughout the workshop, you will be able to participate in asynchronous lecture discussions and encouraged to take advantage of ongoing informal discussions and self-directed writing exercises. (1.2 CEUs)

You will learn:

  • Grammar, punctuation, and styles used in technical writing
  • Basic principles of document design
  • Selecting and presenting evidence to your audience
  • Writing to inform and persuade
  • When (and how to use graphics) in your documents

Who should take this course:

  • Writers who want to develop the skills for producing technical level documents that have clarity and refinement
  • Graduates of Essentials of Business Writing or Fundamentals of Nonfiction Writing or individuals who specifically want to focus on Technical writing
  • Writers who want a Published Author to help them improve and hone their technical writing skills

Essentials of Technical Writing Workshop

Course Outline

Session One: Boot Camp

  • Technical Writing Defined
  • Grammar Review
  • Testing Readability
  • Editing for Clarity
  • Writing in Plain English
  • Writing Styles & Style Guides
  • Dealing with Numbers

Writing Assignment:
Part 1 – Technical Style Guide Introduction
Find a style guide that is used by people in your field and familiarize yourself with it. Feel free to read the entire manual if you would like, but you don’t have to. Part 1 of this week’s assignment is to write an introduction of your chosen style guide. Tell me what you picked, who has written it, and who the audience is.

Next, briefly analyze the readability of your style guide based on the assumed audience. Does the manual put into practice the guidelines that it promotes? The word count for this part of the assignment is 100-250 words.

Part 2 – A Compare and Contrast Report of the Style Guides
For the second part of this week’s assignment, you will contrast and compare your chosen style guide and MLA style (the style guide most often used in high school and college English classes). Give at least three similarities and three differences. Then explain why different audiences might need the differences.

Hint #1: Differences creep up between style guides usually in the following areas: numbers, titles, spacing, abbreviations and citation style. I want you to look for other areas as well, but this will get you started. The word count range for this assignment is 250 to 500 words.

Hint #2: If you’re having trouble finding style guides in your field, here are some pointers:

  • Go to barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com and search on “style guide” or “style manual.”
  • Go to the library and ask the librarian. Most style guides are in the reference/writing section.
  • Go to a bricks-and-mortar bookstore and look at style guides.
  • Ask a professional in your field what guide(s) he or she uses.
  • Ask a professor in your program what style guide(s) he or she uses.

Session Two: Your Text, Your Audience, and Document Design

  • The Purpose of Your Document
  • Examining Your Audience
  • Selecting & Present Evidence to Your Audience
  • Technical Writing for a General Audience
  • Basic Principles of Document Design

Writing Assignment:
Part 1 – Product Research
Look up the manufacturer of your favorite packaged food. Using both primary and secondary research, write a report on that food product –you may choose to include a brief overview of the company that sells the product. You should use one of the organizational approaches of document design discussed in this lecture. The word count range for part 1 of the assignment is 250 to 500 words.

Part 2 – Organization Review
After you have completed (and edited) your report, write a brief explanation of your organizational approach. Why did you choose one approach over the other? How would it have affected your report if you had selected a different approach? The word count range for part 2 of this assignment is 100 to 250 words.

Part 3 – Audience Analysis
Once you’ve finished your final edits on parts 1 and 2, use your computer to check the readability of each piece. Or, if you prefer, you can use the Gunning Fog Index that we discussed last week (the formula is below). Rate the readability. Was it appropriate for your audience? Your analysis should just be a short paragraph (definitely not more than 100 words).

Gunning Fog Index = [(number of words / number of sentences) + “big” words] x 0.4

Session Three: Informing and Persuading 1

  • Goodwill and Informative Messages
  • Correspondence: Memos, E-Mails, and Letters
  • Media Releases
  • Breaking Writer’s Block and Mind Mapping

Writing Assignment:
Part 1 – Letter of Introduction
Write a letter introducing yourself to me. Tell me about your greatest achievements as well as well as your goals for the next five years. Choose either the “old fashioned” letter format or the contemporary one. The word count range for part 1 of the assignment is 200 to 300 words.

Part 2 – Office Memo or E-mail
Write a memo or e-mail to your immediate supervisor suggesting some type of improvement. It could be something to improve office moral or to streamline production. Keep in mind that your boss is the audience for the memo, but your message may require extra explanation for the instructor. Extra information should appear in a short paragraph before the memo or e-mail (do not include it inside the message). Pay attention to formatting and don’t forget the organizational approaches that we’ve discussed.

Session Four: Informing and Persuading 2

  • Reports
  • Proposals
  • Translating Technical Materials

Writing Assignment:
Rewrite a Technical Story for a Lay Audience
People who specialize in technical writing are often asked to communicate their technical knowledge to a “lay” audience who does not know the topic. From the list of brief technical articles or reports below, select one that appeals to you. Block and paste the chosen text into your post. Or, if you would like, you may choose a different technical report to “translate”—just make sure that it is a technical report—and paste that at the front of your post.

Using your chosen technical article, rewrite it or summarize it, in “regular” English. Pretend you’re writing it for USA Today or People magazine, so your readability scale should be between 7th and 9th grade. The word count range for this assignment is 500 to 750 words.

Reports from which to choose:

Session Five: Telling Someone How to Do Something

  • Instructions
  • Manuals
  • Tips

Writing Assignment:
Part 1 – Procedures
Take the instructional article, “How to Change Your Oil” and rewrite it as a procedure. The word count range for part 1 of the assignment is 500 to 750 words.

Part 2 – Instructions
Choose a process that can be explained in 20 steps or fewer. Your set of instructions must tell the reader how to do something. Assume a competent user. If you’re stuck for topics, consider something that you do in your job that you might have to teach an intern, a student, or a worker from a temporary agency. If you’re still stuck, think about your hobbies.

Your topic does not have to be technical, but you must be technical in your approach. Make sure you consider layout and graphic elements. Because you cannot actually post them with your assignment, include parenthetical statements of what graphics you would insert at what point (if any). This part does not have a word count minimum or maximum; just keep it to 20 steps or fewer.

Session Six: Graphics and Presentations

  • Graphics: Different Types, Choosing When and What to Use, Integrating with Text, Callouts, and Guiding Readers
  • Principles of Document Design
  • Oral Presentations & Power Points

Writing Assignment:
If you choose part 3, you don’t need to do parts 1 and 2. Alternately if you do parts 1 and 2, you shouldn’t do part 3.

Part 1: Document Design and Visual Elements
Take any of your previous assignments and rewrite them employing the elements of document design that we have discussed. Add visual elements to your text with double asterisks and a description of the visual. For example you may want to add a bar chart **bar chart of xyz**. Make sure that you include a brief description of both the type of graphic and what it would include. If you would prefer to use a different document, feel free to use something on which you are currently working. The word count range for this assignment is 500 to 750 words.

Part 2: Ethics
For part 2 of this assignment, write a brief review of your design and visual elements choices you made in part 1. Are they good, ethical representations of the data? What considerations did you have to make in order to make the ethical choices? How could you have used a less ethical approach to manipulate the data? The word count range for this assignment is 100 – 250 words.

Part 3: Online Report Review of Design Principles and Ethical Choices
Find an existing report online that includes visual elements and analyze them. Are they ethical representations of the data? Or are they manipulating information to trick the reader? Does the document make good use of the design principles that we have discussed?

Go through the document section by section and tell me what you might change to improve the presentation and draw attention to the important details. Conversely, you can also point out the areas where they did an excellent job of employing design principles to guide the reader through their document.

The word count for this assignment is 500-750 words.