Technical Writing
Are your non-technical people baffled and befuddled by the documents that your technical professionals write? Do they read like gobbledegook?
This two day workshop is designed for technical professionals who write specifications, technical manuals, standards, requirements, e-mail messages, and other technical and non-technical documents for readers with various levels of technical knowledge.
Our Approach:
- To ensure that our training meets the participants’ needs, we customize the curriculum after assessing writing samples and reviewing objectives.
- During training, we encourage active participation through discussion and practice.
- Participants apply concepts and techniques by evaluating, editing, planning and drafting job-related documents with one-to-one feedback from the instructor.
Depending on the needs of your group, participants will learn:
- Standards for effective e-mail messages and other documents.
- Te importance of looking at writing projects from the readers’ points of view.
- The relationship between planning and achieving results.
- Techniques for assessing readers’ needs, levels of technical knowledge, and levels of knowledge about the subject.
- A step-by-step process for deciding what information to include by identifying the questions e-mail messages and other documents need to answer.
- A step-by-step process for organizing information logically for the reader(s) and the purpose.
- Criteria for deciding what information to put in an appendix or an attachment rather than in the body of an e-mail message or document.
- Techniques for writing introductions that give readers a preview of what is to come and summaries that accurately convey key information.
- Techniques for using headings and subheadings that give readers a “road map” through a document.
- Techniques for communicating technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical readers.
- Guidelines for determining what information belongs in a list and for creating lists that are easy to follow.
- Guidelines for incorporating and referring to diagrams, graphics, and other visuals.
- Techniques for determining when and how to use templates to make the writing process more efficient.
- Guidelines for using e-mail productively.
- The importance of using active, concise, specific language and plain English that communicates clearly, quickly, and accurately to specific readers.
