Introduction to Technical Writing
- Trainer
- Dimiter Simov
- Objective
Provide basic knowledge and skills in the field of technical writing.
Attendees receive theoretical knowledge about the field and practice the basic tasks of a Technical Writer. They learn to:
- Plan, outline, write, and review a help topic or support article that meets reader needs and expectations.
- Plan an entire help system or modifications to an existing one and implement the plan using the appropriate tools.
- Target Audience
- Technical Writers, Customer Support Representatives, and Project Managers. Quality assurance staff find the course beneficial too.
- Certificate
- Participants receive certificates for attendance.
- Format
Know and do workshop in 6 sessions: includes theory and practice. Focus on in-class exercises and discussions.
The course balances theory and practical exercises.
- The theoretical part provides the framework, basic concepts, and guidelines, and points to more resources and materials.
- The exercises give participants a chance to practice what they learned and receive personal feedback.
- Duration
- 3 days.
Expected time participants have to dedicate to a session:
1-2 h - preparation and readings
7-8 h - attendance - Delivery
- In-house at your premises, at Lucrat's office, or another appropriate location.
- Price
Based on the number of participants
Participants Price (BGN, without VAT) Up to 6 4800 7 - 12 5500 + 700 for every participant after the 7th
- Options
For in-house delivery
- The format, duration, content, and respectively price of the course are negotiable.
- Topics can be included or excluded from the syllabus.
Syllabus
- Introduction
- Presentation of the course lead and attendees, syllabus, supporting materials and tools. [discussion]
- About Technical Writing –the profession of the technical writer, history and perspectives. [discussion]
- Types of technical documentation– offline and online (accessed over the Internet) help, tutorials, inline instructions, messages, paper manuals, training materials, marketing texts, wikis, blogs, and so on. [discussion and exercise]
- Basics of Technical Writing – what one needs to know and be able to do to become a technical writer. [discussion]
- Psychological implications of being a TW- Paradox of the active user; working with designers, developers, testers, and PM's. [discussion]
- Writing
- Approaches to writing documentation - Write the help before development versus write help at the end. Analogy with test-first approach. [discussion]
- Personas. [discussion and exercise]
- Writing as a process – plan, research, write, read, edit, test. [discussion]
- The Topic, and types of topics. [discussion]
- Planning and writing. [exercise]
- Formatting and Layout
- Presenting data on screen and on paper. [discussion]
- Style – style guides and styles (including cascading style sheets).[demonstration and exercise]
- Microcontent – presenting primary ideas and concept in clear and parsimonious ways. [discussion and exercise]
- Graphics and Images – the role and place of motion, size, brightness and saturation, position, color or hue, and shape. [additional material]
- Tips, tricks, skills 1
- Usability and testing awareness – the technical writer understands the user; technical writers are active testers of the product. [discussion and exercise]
- Oracles – sources of information of whether the program is performing the way it should be performing; approaches for using them. [discussion]
- Templates and patterns – how to approach repeatable tasks and how to reuse content. [discussion and exercise]
- Tips, tricks, skills 2
- Indexes and Tables of content – building and maintaining. [discussion and exercise]
- Information Mapping - dividing and labeling information for good comprehension, fast reading, easy recall. [discussion and exercise]
- Mind Mapping – working with associations from a central key concept. [demonstration]
- Tools for Technical Writing
- Authoring methods and products available on the market. [discussion]
- Selecting authoring tools. [discussion and exercise]
- Metrics – measuring progress and productivity of technical writers. [discussion]
