Introduction to Technical Writing

'Any scientist who cannot explain what he is doing to a reasonably intelligent 14-year old is either incompetent or a charlatan' - Einstein. Unfortunately, most scientists and engineers have real difficulty with communicating their ideas to each other - not to mention a 14-year old. That`s where technical writing comes in. Great technical writing can make a poor product usable - poor technical writing can make a great product useless. This course aims to ensure that participants can make their technical documentation accurate, brief, clear, complete and, above all, useful. The emphasis is on writing to impart complex technical information to a specific target audience.

Participants should be committed to delivering reports, manuals and routine communications that are accurate, concise, clear and focussed on the needs of the target audience.

- A breakdown of report sections
- Making a list of topics
- Arranging chapters and sections
- Writing clear headings
- Sorting into logical sequence
- Composing a Table of Contents
- Writing a management summary
- Compiling appendices
- Writing conclusions and recommendations

- Adopting writing rules - why and how?
- Controlling sentence length
- Using vertical lists
- Using tables
- Cutting down on clauses
- Voices: passive versus active

- Knowing your end user
- Interviewing Subject Matter Experts
- Explaining jargon
- Style and consistency
- Does it work? - Smart testing
- Updates - Documentation control

- Clarifying and imparting complex information
- Abbreviations, acronyms and jargon
- Using different tenses
- Avoiding verbosity
- Using determiners correctly
- Keeping it simple

- The basics of punctuation, and grammar
- Common errors and how to avoid them
- Using personal pronouns correctly
- Using the apostrophe correctly
- Their, there and they`re
- Effect and affect