Target Participants

People who write technical documents as part of their regular job duties are ideal candidates for this onsite technical writing training program. 

Course Outcomes

 This technical writing course will:

  • Help participants communicate written technical information to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Emphasize the need to pick an organizational strategy that best suits the purposes of a document.
  • Provide tips on making complicated information understandable to a variety of readers.
  • Show participants options for presenting highly complex information in an easily understood way.

Course Overview

No matter how brilliant an idea, if it isn’t conveyed clearly, its value is never realized. This technical writing course is designed for scientific, medical, and technical professionals who must produce technical documents as part of their work.

Covering a comprehensive list of topics, this onsite program will teach participants how to communicate complex information to a range of readers.

The workshop is interactive and comprises a range of hands-on exercises and activities to help participants improve their technical writing ability.

Program Objectives

At the program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

  • Explain what distinguishes technical writing tasks from those required in other professions.
  • State a main idea in one sentence.
  • Understand the connection between audience awareness and a writer’s stylistic choices.
  • Select the most appropriate form in which to present information.
  • Transform complex information into readable, understandable prose.
  • Organize information in a logical sequence.
  • Eliminate jargon, redundancy, wordiness, and the passive voice from written texts.
  • Minimize word, sentence, and paragraph length without sacrificing clarity or substance.
  • Understand when and how to use graphics in written texts for maximum effectiveness.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline 

Technically Speaking: Defining the Features of Technical Writing

In this introductory discussion, participants will discover the features that set technical writing apart from other kinds of professional writing. They will also have the opportunity to voice any specific challenges they face when creating technical documents. 

Put It in Writing: When Written Communication Is the Best Alternative

This unit covers several ways technical information may be disseminated. Following an explanation of these options, participants will determine situations in which writing is the most efficient and productive way to transmit complicated ideas. 

It Takes Two: The Importance of Audience Awareness

With the exception of diary or journal entries, the act of writing is based on the participation of at least two people: the writer and the reader. This workshop component focuses on the vital role audience awareness plays in the choices writers make, especially in terms of word choice, tone, and the amount of detail they need to include. Through a series of activities, participants will see the necessity for putting themselves in the position of their readers before they begin to draft a technical document.

Get to the Point: Discovering the Main Idea

At this point in the program, participants will have the opportunity to become decoders as well as creators of main ideas in written texts. After examining several technical writing samples for the purpose of identifying the main idea in each, participants will have the chance to practice the technique of narrowing broad topics into manageable thesis statements. The exercises included in the segment will help participants overcome writer’s block and discover exactly what point they want to make. 

Linking the Chain: Arranging Details in Logical Sequence

During this seminar segment, group members will work through a series of Business Training Works’ tools to organize information. By this discussion’s conclusion, participants should understand how to introduce a thesis statement and support its assertions with subsequent paragraphs. 

Rock, Paper, Scissors? Choosing the Best Format to Convey Information

Although a large amount of writing in technical, scientific, and medical fields is formulaic, there are times when writers must choose how best to present their ideas. During this part of the program, participants will learn the connection between function and form. 

Precise Prose: Removing Jargon, Redundancy, Wordiness, and the Passive Voice

Bad writing habits are barriers to clear dissemination of information and may lead to disastrous outcomes, especially in procedural documents.  Through a series of activities, participants will learn to eliminate problems that often plague technical writers. 

Measure Twice, Cut Even More: Knowing When Less Is More

Although by its very nature technical writing includes sophisticated and sometimes obscure language, this fact alone should not prevent technical writing from being clear, to the point, and understandable to even lay readers. This lesson is designed to help participants learn to measure and shorten the length of words, sentences, and paragraphs for the purpose of clarity. 

Graphic Details: Punching Up the Presentation

Used not only for clarification of complex information, graphics can also save time, space, and money. During this final program segment, participants will learn how to assess material to determine its suitability for placement in a graphic representation. 

At the course’s conclusion, participants will have a basic command of a range of tools needed to communicate complex ideas and technical information in writing.