Technical Writing Certification Course
Module One: Preparation
- Establish your purpose
- Identify your audience or readers
- Consider the context
- Determine your scope of coverage
- Select the medium
Module Two: Research
- Brainstorm to determine what you already know
- Conduct research
- Take notes (note-taking)
- Interview for information
- Create and use questionnaires
- Avoid plagiarism
- Document sources
Module Three: Organization
- Choose the best methods of development
- Outline your notes and ideas
- Develop and integrate visuals
- Consider layout and design
- logic errors
- positive writing
- voice
- Check for ethics in writing
- biased language
- copyright
- plagiarism
- Check for appropriate word choice
- abstract / concrete words
- affectation, jargon, and plain language
- cliches
- connotation / denotation
- defining terms
- Eliminate problems with grammar
Module Four: Writing a Draft
- Select an appropriate point of view
- Adopt an appropriate style and tone
- Use effective sentence construction
- Construct effective paragraphs
- Use quotations and paraphrasing
- Write an introduction
- Write a conclusion
- Choose a title
Module Five: Revision
- Check for unity and coherence conciseness
- pace
- transition
- Check for sentence variety
- emphasis
- parallel structure
- subordination
- Check for clarity
- Review mechanics and punctuation
- abbreviations
- capitalization
- contractions
- dates
- italics
- numbers
- proofreading
- spelling