See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4zIQ6F_iMI
• 18+ years of experience as a technical communicator.
• Vice President, Society for Technical Communication (STC)
• Written and designed documentation for software products in
the documentation, media, industrial automation, simulation,
and pharmaceutical industries.
• Speaker at STC, WritersUA, tcworld, LavaCon, and CIDM on a
variety of topics.
• Articles published in STC Intercom, tcworld magazine,
TechCom Manager, WritersUA website, and the Content
Wrangler.
• Technical Writing Instructor, Community College of Allegheny
County
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What is Technical Writing?
Technical Writing Deliverables
Types of Technical Writing
Considerations
Examples and Resources
Technical writing is writing that helps users
solve problems with technologies and technical
subject matter.
(Jeff Grabill, Georgia State University)
US Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11
Edition
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos319.htm
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Software documentation
Medical Writing
Policies and Procedures (HR)
Grant Writing
Scientific Writing
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Manuals (including EPUB and PDF)
Online Help (including versions for mobile devices)
Quick Reference Guides
Tutorials
Training Materials
Release notes (software documentation only)
Troubleshooting Guides
Installation Guides
API Reference documentation (software documentation only)
Videos
Podcasts
• Translation
• Standards
– Internal standards (style guide)
– Industry standards, such as HIPAA/FDA, SarbanesOxley, ISO
• Accessibility
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Word Processing
Help Authoring Tools (Help and manuals)
Presentation
Project planning
Flow charting
Graphics
Software and Hardware:
• http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx
• http://helpcentral.componentone.com/Documentation.aspx
• http://www.catgenie.com/customer-service/manuals/
Engineering Reports:
• Writing Engineering Technical Reports:
http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/documents/ce-trpt/
• owl.english.purdue.edu/media/ppt/20061207031120_647.ppt
• http://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/2_AssessmentTasks/assess_tuts/tech
nical_reports_LL/samples/Aerospace%20Engineering%20sample%20report.pdf
Training Materials:
• http://www.astd.org/
• http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_4.htm
• http://managementhelp.org/trng_dev/trng_dev.htm
FLOSS Manuals http://en.flossmanuals.net/
– Free manuals for free software (One Laptop Per Child,
Sugar learning platform)
WikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page
– Document “how to” do anything.
Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
– Wikipedia’s 16 million articles (over 3.4 million in English)
have been written collaboratively by volunteers around
the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by
anyone with access to the site.
Professional Organization:
• Society for Technical Communication stc.org
Articles about Technical Communication:
• EServer Technical Communication Library tc.eserver.org
– Articles about all things tech comm: writing, workplace,
usability, web design, organizations, editing, documentation,
careers
Book
• Technical Writing 101 by Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe (2009)