Technical Communication Proficiency Sequence: Introduction
If you are a professional who is a technical specialist or who works with technical information, success in your job may require you to develop or review product descriptions, procedures, instructions, specifications, reference materials, or related documents.
Classes in Technical Writing & Editing
Our Technical Communication Proficiency Sequence could help you to become a more efficient, effective writer and editor of such materials.
Building your knowledge and skills as a technical communicator could benefit your performance in your current position. It also could improve your prospects for promotion, by helping to prepare you for management opportunities or even laying the groundwork for a writing career.
Course Topics:
- technical writing
- professional writing
- designing & producing technical publications
- technical editing
- desktop publishing
- online writing
- promotional writing & more
The Technical Communications Field
In Technical Communications, the finished product is something you wrote. That includes a lot of collaboration. You're interviewing people. You're coordinating. 20 to 30 percent of your time is writing.
The job requires plenty of contact with technical professionals, from programmers and project managers to machine operators and medical technicians. Solitary? Not quite. Collaborative? Most definitely.
The field has broadened to include a variety of job roles and responsibilities. Technical communicators write and edit technical manuals, but their work may also include producing online tutorials, Web training, and other materials for industries ranging from health care to manufacturing.
As a group, technical communicators come from varied backgrounds. The five most common academic backgrounds are English, technical communication, science or engineering, computer science and journalism. Anyone with a technical background will have an easier time breaking into the industry, as it shows a facility with technical topics and the ability to work with industry professionals.
An experienced writer can handle projects such as:
- User guides
- Online help
- Online documentation
- Internet documentation
- Web pages
- Operator's manuals
- Programmer's guides
- Administrator's guides
- Installation guides
- Technical reference manuals
- Sarbanes Oxley
- Proposals
- Process documentation
- Policies/procedures
- ISO 9000 documentation
- Standard operating procedures
- Work flows/work integrations
- System design documents
- Assembly manuals
- Maintenance manuals
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