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 thebest 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 contact hours (non-HSW) to architects and 7.0 PDHs to professional engineers in most states, including New York and New Jersey. HalfMoon Education Inc. is an approved continuing education sponsor for engineers in New York (NYSED Sponsor No. 35) and New Jersey (Approval No 24GP00000700).

The American Institute of Architects has approved this seminar for 7.0 Learning Units (Sponsor No. J885). Please note these LUs are not HSW. Courses approved by the AIA qualify for New Jersey architects.

Architects and engineers with continuing education requirements in other states will be able to apply the hours earned at this seminar, in most cases. Refer to specific state rules to determine eligibility, or contact HalfMoon Education for assistance.

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

Dr. 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.