In this training, your staff will learn core skills to plan, outline, write, revise, and format a technical report or document. They will learn to write so that a non-technical audience can understand their ideas.
In addition to covering basic writing skills that are crucial for all technical documentation, this course dedicates one half-day to tips for mastering specific technical forms including abstracts, reports, procedures, proposals, recommendations, and Table of Contents. This 12-hour workshop can be delivered as two full days or four half-day sessions, either in person or online.
Session One: Prewrite (half-day)
Planning: participants learn to identify the purpose, person, and point of a technical document. They analyze the primary, secondary and immediate audiences of their document, identifying how much technical background is necessary to include and what content the document should cover.
Gathering Information: Participants learn how to identify knowledge gaps and target the best resources to find this knowledge. Participants also learn how to request and prepare for an interview with an SME who is relevant for their document.
Brainstorming: Participants learn a unique tool to engage in creative thinking that allows them to generate more ideas and feel more relaxed going into the writing process.
Outlining: Participants learn to consolidate key ideas and place them within an outline. Then participants learn to revise this outline to ensure later coherence of the document.
Session Two: Write and Revise (half-day)
Writing: Participants learn tools to write a first draft quickly and effectively including Don’t edit as you write, writing to section completion, and using a timer to increase productivity.
Revising: In the revision section of the course, we review three key aspects of good writing: waste no time, simplify sentences, and use the active voice. We dedicate part of day 2 and day 3 to working on these skills.
Session Three: Writing Techniques and Formatting
Formatting: A huge aspect of technical writing is creating documents that can be easily skimmed and searched. We dedicate this section to covering key aspects of good formatting and searchability including using descriptive headings, white space, following a grid, and giving the reader clear visual targets on the page.
Punctuation: We cover common punctuation errors in the use of the comma, hyphen, apostrophe, and semi-colon.
Session Four: What You Write – Tips for Top Technical Documents (half-day)
This is a customizable day of the course. We dedicate more attention and practice to the most relevant document types for the client. Topics include:
- Abstracts and reports
- Procedures
- Recommendations
- Proposals
- Table of Contents