Technical Writing Skills for Non-writers - 2 day course

Communication and the Writing Process

Introduction to communication
Communication in the workplace
The communication triangle
Technical writing defined
Writing models

Writing and Words

The 10 most common mistakes in technical writing
Verbs
Nouns
Appropriate and correct words

Sentences and Punctuation

Sentence problems
Clauses
Sentence fragments
Modifiers
Parallel construction
Long sentences
Punctuation
Hyphens
Apostrophes

Style and Style Conventions

Style
Style conventions

Audience and Task Analysis

Audience analysis
Stages of user
Task analysis
Task inventories
Procedural analysis

Development of Information

Development of Information
Control themes
Transitions
Usability testing

Good Technical Writing

What makes good technical writing
The tools and tricks of the trade
Organising information
Paragraphing and chunking

Specific Writing Techniques

Proposals and tenders
Instructions
Specifications
Procedures

This course is suitable for engineers, programmers and developers. All of whom write, but do not consider writing a prime consideration in their skill-set.

With the course you get a substantial manual with full text for all topics. This makes it a great reference book for after the course. The manual contains several extremely valuable appendices containing words and phrases to avoid, commonly misspelt words, words commonly confused or misused, and much more.

Course topics are illustrated with real examples and interactive exercises.

The course is presented by Jill Nicholson