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

This seminar is open to the public and offers 7.0 continuing education hours/PDHs to professional engineers in all states. Educators and courses are not subject to preapproval in Pennsylvania.

HalfMoon Education is an approved continuing education sponsor for engineers in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey (Approval No. 24GP00000700), New York (NYSED Sponsor No. 35), North Carolina, and North Dakota.

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 Department

Mr. Decker teaches Technical Writing and Writing Technical Manuals in support of the Professional Writing minor. 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.

CD/Manual Price: $279.00

Currently, our self-study products DO NOT qualify for AIA, LACES, ASLA or CLARB credit.

HalfMoon will mail you these materials via USPS. Please allow 5 weeks from the date of purchase to receive your product. If the live seminar is in the future, please allow 5 weeks from the date of the live seminar.

The CD/Manual package includes an audio recording of a live seminar on CDs, along with a bound copy of the manual that was distributed at the seminar. The manual contains written materials prepared by the seminar speaker(s).

The CDs contain embedded number codes, which you are required to document and return to HalfMoon if you wish to obtain a certificate of completion for the program. The acceptance of self-administered continuing education activities vary widely between states and professions. Before undertaking any self-study effort, you should review the rules of your licensing/certifying entity.

HalfMoon Education guarantees its products. The self-study products are recorded from a live seminar and there are circumstances where an audio recording is not available. HalfMoon will contact you and issue a full refund if the product you ordered is not available. If you are not happy with a product you receive, you can return the product for a full refund. However, refunds will not be issued if completion certificates are requested.

Learn More