Details: Public courses
1: Fundamental characteristics of good technical writing
The principle of communicative efficacy; the five characteristics of sound factual writing; audience-centric writing and how to write for mixed audiences; techniques for controlling vocabulary; what is correct writing?
2: Planning a technical writing project
Typical documentation development cycle; estimating; planning; reviewing (and tips on securing reviews); pagination tricks; dealing with printers
3: Writing technical reports and proposals
Types; section-by-section description; writing effective executive summaries; bids, white papers and RFTs; overcoming writer's block; citation and referencing; common problems (of logic, topic hierarchy, citations, cohesion, balance, etc.)
4: Writing step-by-step instructions
Techniques; tips and tricks; branching, looping, minimising steps
5: Document design and usability
Templates; designing for structure; font choice and its effect on comprehension; the three pillars of usability
6: The language of language
Parts of speech; the building blocks of language; writing effective paragraphs
7: Aspects of grammar
Old rules best forgotten; subject–verb agreement; the that or which dilemma
8: Obstacles to readability
Sentence complexity; conceptual density; misplaced jargon; nominalisation; noun clustering; poor use of voice; issues of tone; readability formulas
9: Troublesome words:
Words easily confused; transition words; regional variations
10: Vital punctuation
Senseless fads; hyphens and dashes; commas; parenthetic markers; brackets; colons; semicolons; apostrophes; etc.
11: Breaking into the technical writing profession
How to network; writing a good CV; necessary software skills, remuneration, pros and cons of freelancing
[Table of Contents from the course handbook]
