Agenda
Registration: 8:00 – 8:30 am
Morning Session: 8:30 am – 12:00 pm
Lunch (On your own): 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Afternoon Session: 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Planning Documents
Effective technical communication characteristics
• Ensuring specificity, accuracy, structure and visual appeal
Defining purpose and audience
• Identifying the document purposes and assessing
your audience’s needs and expertise
Writing Documents
Adopting an appropriate style and tone
Using effective sentence construction
Using sentence variety (emphasis, parallel structure,
subordination)
Designing documents
• Choosing the right words and technical terminology
• Ensuring clarity (ambiguity, awkwardness, logic errors,
positive writing, voice)
• Constructing effective paragraphs
• Page layout and design considerations
Organizing and planning
• Developing work strategies to set priorities and to make the
best use of writing time
• Creating project plans outlining specific details for a
predictable and logical structure to help your audience
understand technical information
Revising and Editing
Editing for grammar and style
• Using punctuation and mechanics correctly
Reviewing content
• Checking accuracy, completeness and effectiveness
• Checking unity and coherence
• Ethical issues
Graphics
• Creating and integrating visuals
Best Practices in Correspondence and Technical Documents
Business letters
• Formats and types of business correspondence
Memos and electronic mail
• Advantages and disadvantages of internal communications
Document elements
• Using formats to establish the order of content in document
front matter, body and end matter
Document types
• Specifications, reports, instructions, and proposals
Credits
Professionals Engineers
7.0 PDHs
Architects
Non-Credit in Alabama &
Louisiana
7.0 AIA Learning Units
Continuing Education Credit Information
This seminar is open to the public and offers 7.0 PDHs to professional engineers in most other states, including Alabama and Louisiana. Educators and courses are not subject to preapproval in Alabama. HalfMoon Education is a Louisiana-approved engineer continuing education provider. This course also offers 7.0 non-HSW continuing education hours to architects in many states. For Alabama and Louisiana architects, this is a non-credit education opportunity.
This seminar is registered with the American Institute of Architects for 7.0 Learning Units (Sponsor No. J885).
Architects and engineers seeking continuing education credit in other states will be able to claim the hours earned at this seminar, in most cases. Refer to specific state rules to determine eligibility.
Attendance will be monitored, and attendance certificates will be available after the seminar for most individuals who complete the entire event. Attendance certificates not available at the seminar will be mailed to participants within fifteen business days.
Speakers
Dr. Mark Decker, PhD
Professor and Department Chair in the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania’s English DepartmentDr. Decker teaches in support of Commonwealth University’s Professional Writing minor. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Writing at Commonwealth. Dr. Decker has PhD and MA degrees in English from The Pennsylvania State University (2001, 1997) and he graduated summa cum laude in English from Utah State University (1995).
While an undergraduate, Dr. Decker worked for several years as a staff writer for Aerotech News and Review, an aerospace and defense industry trade newspaper published in Lancaster, California. During graduate school, Dr. Decker was a member of the Leonhard Center for Technical Writing Initiative, a collaboration between Penn State’s Department of English and College of Engineering designed to promote an exchange of ideas between technical writing instructors and the scientific and engineering communities. Dr. Decker also taught Business Writing, Technical Writing, and an Advanced Technical Writing course that enrolled graduate students from technical and scientific disciplines.
After graduate school, Dr. Decker spent four years at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where he taught Technical Writing in support of that school’s major in Technical Communication and served as the advisor for the student chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. Dr. Decker has given presentations at several national and international conferences and has published both a book and a co-edited book as well as several scholarly articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia chapters.