RE: suggestions needed for teaching a introductory college course in technical writing

["MMdeaton" <mmdeaton -at- mmdeaton -dot- com>]

What are they supposed to have learned by the time they finish this course?
To write procedures, to know about the field? I would start by figuring out
the objectives for the course and then you will probably discover that you
need a variety of readings, not necessarily one text book.

I agree that "Managing..." is not for beginners. And I am not sure Karen's
book is really an adequate textbook for a writing course. I would like at:

How to Communicate Technical Information : A Handbook of Software and
Hardware Documentation
by Jonathan Price, Henry Korman (Contributor)


Another idea is   Writing Software Documentation: A Task-Oriented Approach
(Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication)

or

The User Manual Manual : How to Research, Write, Test, Edit & Produce a
Software
by Michael Bremer (Paperback)

or
Technical Communication
by Rebecca E. Burnett



Mary Deaton
Deaton Information Design
Write a review; Win a book at: http://www.mmdeaton.com

-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of Lurker
writer

With such an open-ended question, I hope you're prepared to receive a
vareity of responses (probably some ambiguous ones, too).

I'm not trying to be flippant here, but check out the new "Technical Writing
for Dummies" book. It provides a pretty good overview of the skills and
knowledge needed to be successful in the technical writing field.

Some resources that may help you:

1. "Mastering Technical Writing" by Joseph Mancuso
2. "Technical Editing" by Judith Tarutz
3. "Dynamics in Document Design" by Karen Shriver

"Managing Your Documentation Projects" is considered by many to be one the
field's holy books, but I'd pass on it for an introductory course on
technical writing. Would be good for a course on "Documentation Project
Management" though.

Good luck.




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