Overview:

This course contains both lecture and lab. This hands-on seminar aims to improve the technical writing skills of engineers and scientists.  Writing is a large part of almost every technical professional’s job. Why not learn to do that part of the job more efficiently and precisely?

Note: Students to bring a laptop with them to the class in order to work on course exercises. (laptops will not be provided. A CD will be provided containing course exercises.  Students without a laptop may attend the course but it will probably become frustrating to do all the writing by hand.

Note that this is not a course for professional technical writers.

Target Audience:

This course is aimed at engineers and scientists from all disciplines who want to improve their writing skills.

Benefits of attending:

• Improve the quality of your writing.

• Adjust your writing to meet the needs of different audiences.

• Write less, while communicating more.

Detailed Outline:

• Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

  - Review of differences

  - Benefits of active voice

  - Exceptions: when is passive voice valuable

  - Exercises: rewriting passive voice sentences as clear active voice sentences.

   

• Short Sentences

  - The value of shorter sentences

  - How to reduce the length of sentences.

  - Exercises: revising muddled long sentences into crystal clear short ones

   

• Strong Sentences

  - Verbs

  - Sentence variety

  - Graceful transitions

  - Exercises: using discussed techniques to enliven dull prose

   

• Lists

  - Bulleted vs. numbered lists

  - Effective lists

  - How to introduce lists

  - Parallel lists

  - Exercises: generating accurate directions

   

• Audience

  - Defining target audience along several parameters.
  - Translating audience definition into appropriate documents.
  - Exercises: evaluating the audience for the documents you currently write.
   

• Words and terminology

  - Jargon

  - Naming

  - Abbreviations

  - Definitions

  - Exercises: identifying jargon

   

• Description

  - Hierarchical description technique

  - Compare and contrast

  - Exercises: describing a thumbtack

   

• Peer Reviews

  - Effective editing

  - Getting your way (while preserving the peace)

  - Best engineering practices applied to documentation

  - Exercises: performing peer documentation reviews

   

• Professional Secrets

  - Pace

  - The power of examples

  - Tone

  - Beyond the obvious

  - Fear of the blank page

  - Exercises: explaining the technical part of your job to a ten-year old

Speaker’s Bio:

Barry Rosenberg has written over 60 technical manuals and managed three different technical documentation groups. I hold a Masters degree in technical writing from RPI.  He has taught many technical topics (including shell programming, data structures, and physics) to a wide range of audiences.  His most recent book is Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists published in 2005 by Addison-Wesley.  Finally, most of the material taught in this seminar is taken an advanced technical writing course that he taught for four semesters at MIT.

Each student will get a copy of the speaker’s book, Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists (Addison-Wesley, 2005). Students will also receive printed copies of  course notes. Lunch and Coffee Breaks will be provided as part of the course registration.

Decision (Run/Cancel) Date for  this Course is Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Course Fee Schedule:

On-line Registration and Payment

On-line registration is closed for this course, but registration is still available on-site between 8:45AM - 9:00AM, Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at the Holiday Inn Select, 15 Middlesex Canal Park, Woburn or by contacting the office at 781-245-5405.

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Maintained by R M Stelting

Updated Monday May 05, 2008