Technical Writing 101 Introduction to Technical Writing

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)