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Drawing on IBM's unsurpassed technical communications experience, readers discover today's best practices for meeting nine quality characteristics: accuracy, clarity, completeness, concreteness, organization, retrievability, style, task orientation, and visual effectiveness. Packed with guidelines, checklists, and before-and-after examples, Developing Quality Technical Information, Third Edition is an indispensable resource for the future of technical communication.
No other book can better prepare you to work as a writer in the technical world, to write better about technology for a nontechnical audience, or to understand how the ever-more-inportant writer can help fill the technology gap between the knows and know-nots. Book jacket.
Technical Reports are usually written according to general standards, corporate - sign standards of the current university or company, logical rules and practical - periences. These rules are not known well enough among engineers. There are many books that give general advice in writing. This book is specialised in how to write Technical Reports and addresses not only engineers, but also natural sci- th tists, computer scientists, etc. It is based on the 6 edition published in 2008 by st Vieweg in German and is now published as 1 edition by Springer in English. Both authors of the German edition have long experience in educating en- neers at the University of Applied Sciences Hannover. They have held many l- tures where students had to write reports and took notes about all positive and negative examples that occurred in design reports, lab work reports, and in theses. Prof. Dr. Lutz Hering has worked for VOLKSWAGEN and DAIMLER and then changed to the University of Applied Sciences Hannover where he worked from 1974 until 2000. He held lectures on Technical Drawing, Construction and Design, CAD and Materials Science. Dr. Heike Hering worked nine years as a Technical Writer and was responsible for many CAD manuals in German and English. She is now employed at TÜV NORD Akademie, where she is responsible for E-Learning projects, technical documentation and software training and supervises students who are writing their theses. Prof. Dr. -Ing.
Like its predecessors, the new edition of this popular guide uses a friendly, straightforward approach to help scientists and engineers demystify the process of writing and presenting technical information. Among the topics covered are gathering information, writing different types of documents, editing the work, and making presentations. New chapters explain how to write and design for electronic media, including multimedia products and the World Wide Web. Also new are chapters on how to write public relations materials and marketing and advertising copy, which are intended to help technical professionals acquire a broader range of skills-an important factor in this age of downsizing.
Giving users the tools and know-how to become proficient technical writers, this state-of-the-art guide takes a hands-on approach to learning the ins and outs of the craft, organizing material around a series of task-oriented chapters that each focus on a typical kind of technical writing assignment. Centered around the belief that writing is a step-by-step process, it addresses the expanded roles and needs of the today's technical writer, and emphasizes the importance of technical communication in the professional workplace.Provides varied, real-life examples that show how writers progress from start to finish, emphasizing the choices writers make and why they make those choices. Covers traditional forms as well as specialized contemporary forms, such as abstracts, literature reviews, impact studies, user manuals, on-line documentation, and hypertext authoring. Focuses on the computer as an integral part of all areas of communication, and shows how to utilize the newest computer-based tools, including how to write for the World Wide Web. Now devotes an entire chapter to ethical issues encountered in both technical writing and in general writing classes.For technical writers.
FOREWORD BY GUY KAWASAKI Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the Net — presentationzen.com — shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.
This book is based on, and expanded from, a course on technical report writing that the author has presented for over 20 years. Are you an engineer who writes technical reports as part of your job, yet you wish you could make them shorter and better - and write them faster? Maybe you write external reports for your consultancy's clients, or internal reports for senior managers. Maybe sometimes you think you signed up to be an engineer not a writer. But now you are a writer as well as an engineer and you wish that writing a good report was easier. This book will show you how to write shorter and better reports, and write them faster. The author is a retired chartered engineer and who has written about 100 articles and four books - published by Kogan Page, Macmillan and San Francisco Press. Here is just one comment from one client who arranged for the course on which this book is based to be presented to his staff: 'Thank you for the course. All the feedback I've had so far has been very positive... which is quite unusual as they can be a cynical bunch.' Well, not so much as cynical as don't like 'airy-fairy' ideas. The book is down-to-earth with practical ideas.You will learn: - How to break the task into three phases: planning, writing and editing.- How to avoid the biggest complaint about technical reports.- How to use three layers of sequencing to make the writing easier.- The most common format for technical reports - and three others. - How much detail to include.- Twelve big tips to improve the writing and several smaller tips.- How to satisfy both technical and non-technical readers.- How to cut the waffle.- How to edit your own work, which is never an easy thing to do.- Seventeen consistency checks to look for when editing.- How to get the best from the Microsoft grammar checker.- How to use the readability statistics.- Variations between British and US English.PLUS: A style guide with over 130 items of guidance, including all the punctuation marks. Did you know that the hyphen has been described as the punctuation mark to drive you mad?
This book is intended for anyone whose job involves writing formal documentation. It is aimed at non-native speakers of English, but should also be of use for native speakers who have no training in technical writing. Technical writing is a skill that you can learn and this book outlines some simple ideas for writing clear documentation that will reflect well on your company, its image and its brand. The book has four parts: Structure and Content: Through examples, you will learn best practices in writing the various sections of a manual and what content to include. Clear Unambiguous English: You will learn how to write short clear sentences and paragraphs whose meaning will be immediately clear to the reader. Layout and Order Information: Here you will find guidelines on style issues, e.g., headings, bullets, punctuation and capitalization. Typical Grammar and Vocabulary Mistakes: This section is divided alphabetically and covers grammatical and vocabulary issues that are typical of user manuals.
