Technical Report Writing
After completing this course, students will be able to: • Communicate more effectively with collaborative writing tools and techniques • Recognize and apply grammatical best practices • Leverage concepts in sentence and paragraph construction • Structure agendas, emails, business proposals, and business reports
Description
Working With Words
- Monitoring Spelling, Grammar, and Verb Tense
- Creating a Reference Sheet
- Understanding ‘Reading Level’, analyzing and adjusting for better reading comprehension
- Being concise without complex
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Constructing Sentences
- Recognizing Sentence Parts
- Classifying Sentence Type
- Increasing Readability with Punctuation
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Creating Paragraphs
- The Three Basic Components
- Organization Methods
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Finding Facts
- Identifying and Using Key Resources
- Fact-Finding and Information Gathering
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Using Graphics Effectively
- Understanding the requirement for graphics within the technical document
- Describing graphics effectively
- Adding Alternate text to graphics
- Considering Copyright laws and the use of graphics.
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Collaborative Writing
- Clarifying the Objective – agreements between groups
- Collaborative Writing Strategies and Patterns
- Establishing standards between stakeholders
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Types of Collaborative Business Writing
- Applying Different Construction Techniques
- Cut & Paste, Puzzle, Sequential Summative
- Integrating Construction
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Collaborative Tools and Processes
- Planning and Revision
- Identifying documents as ‘draft’ and ‘final versions’
- How to handle revisions
- Creating Outlines and Storyboards
- Using outlines to streamline a presentation
- Building Team Cohesion
- “All on the same page”, creating collectively approved templates and processes for reports
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Writing Meeting Agendas
- Choosing an Agenda Format
- Creating a well formed agenda template
- Structuring and Writing the Agenda
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Writing E-Mails, Reports and Proposals
- Addressing Your Message
- Understanding the importance of the subject line
- How to present attachments for effectiveness
- Using Proper Grammar and Defining Acronyms
- Knowing your audience, handling acronyms properly.
- Structuring, Formatting, and Writing Your Report
- The importance of consistent document structure
- Creating and using templates
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn
Finalizing Technical Documents
- Importance of Metadata, adding metadata
- Sanitizing documents for security purposes
- Understanding PDFs as a final source (PDF/A, PDF/UA, PDF/X)
- Quick Quiz – what did we learn