Technical Writing Essentials – From Basics to AI
Published by Pearson
Take your writing skills to the next level
- Learn how to tell a technical story to hold a reader’s interest
- Clarify and simplify complex technical explanations
- Learn how to polish documents using examples so they go from good to great
- Leverage Generative AI to reduce time spent and increase text quality
Technical writing is a timeless skill. Unlike the newest programming language or technology fad, clear and convincing documentation will always be needed. As professional engineers, such writing often exists in the form of consulting deliverables, architectural designs, product documentation, research whitepapers, or detailed technical procedures. Regardless of the document in question or the technologies involved, there are several fundamental principles one can apply to improve the content’s quality.
This course will teach you various techniques to do exactly that. Trainer Nicholas Russo is a professional writer and speaker with expertise spanning multiple technical areas. His public body of work includes several books, instructor-led video courses, on-demand video courses, self-published technical whitepapers, blog posts, web seminars, professional code projects, conference presentations, and miscellaneous training videos. Creating this extensive and varied content provides countless opportunities for developing, applying, and refining a generalized model for technical writing. This course relies extensively on real-life examples, presented to attendees as practice exercises, to help illustrate the key points. To address a constantly changing content creation landscape, the course has been recently updated to integrate Generative AI. You’ll learn how to generate new text, summarize existing text, and interact with code/scripts/configuration in real-time. This is a highly interactive, hands-on course!
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of the live online course, you’ll understand:
- How to “tell a story” using the “Three Cs” model
- Applying the principles of terseness, precision, and conciseness to any text
- Quickly determine whether given a text block or diagram is “good” or “bad”
- Identify unhelpful jargon or unnecessarily confusing statement
- Use Generative AI to improve, simplify, and expedite your writing
And you’ll be able to:
- Quickly determine whether given a text block or diagram is “good” or “bad”
- Identify unhelpful jargon or unnecessarily confusing statements
- Provide constructive criticism when technically reviewing the work of others
This live event is for you because...
- You are a writer, engineer, consultant, or business administrator responsible for professional correspondence within your organization
- Your general-purpose English writing skills are good, but you sometimes struggle to clearly communicate technical topics
- Your experience with technical writing may vary from beginner to advanced skills, and you want to gain new insights from a fellow professional
Prerequisites
Prerequisites
- none
Course Set-up
- Have any text editor handy. This may include advanced word processing applications, such as Microsoft Word, or a simple notepad style of application.
- Participants are encouraged to reference the following git repository before the course, which contains in-class exercises. Participants who don’t view the repository before the course will have an opportunity to do so before beginning any exercises.
Recommended Follow-up
- Read: Technical Writing for Business People by Carrie Marshall
- Watch: Learn How To Write A Great Technical Book, By Example by Tim O’Reilly
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Segment 1: Introduction and Attendee Setup (10 minutes)
- Course overview and participation expectations
- Instructor demonstration of downloading exercise files
- Time given to attendees to get setup
Segment 2: Effective Storytelling (25 minutes)
- The “Three Cs” storytelling model
- Sequencing and assembly process
- Attendee hands-on exercises
Segment 3: Planning and Outlining (25 minutes)
- Organizational strategies
- Common pitfalls
- Attendee hands-on exercises
Break (10 minutes)
Segment 4: Document Composition (30 minutes)
- Core principles: terse, precise, concise
- Working with numbers and numerical accuracy
- Attendee hands-on exercises
Segment 5: Technical Diagramming (30 minutes)
- Components of a good diagram
- Mutually supporting diagrams and text techniques
- Attendee hands-on exercises
Break (10 minutes)
Segment 6: Navigating Jargon (25 minutes)
- Acceptable, unacceptable, and gray-zone jargon discussion
- Industry-specific exceptions
- Attendee hands-on exercises
Segment 7: Optimizations, Examples, and Use Cases (15 minutes)
- Fonts, methods of speech, appendix, and acronym glossary tips
- Integrating examples to support the main story
Break (10 minutes)
Segment 8: Writing with Generative AI (40 minutes)
- Use-case discussion: text/code generation, classification, and interaction
- Instructor-led demonstration (attendees with OpenAI accounts can follow along)
Segment 9: Open Discussion (5 minutes)
- Dedicated question and answer (Q&A) time
- Verbal review of course along with personal tips from the author
Course wrap-up and next steps (5 minutes)
Your Instructor
Nicholas Russo
Nicholas Russo holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). His primary programming experience is in C# and Java, but has been programming almost exclusively in Ansible and Python over the past several years. Nick’s day job is an automation-focused network engineer, but he loves teaching others about technology. Nick lives in Maryland, USA with his wife, Carla, and daughters, Olivia and Josephine.