Get to the Point: A Practical Writing Course for Technical Professionals

Don't waste your audience's time: Be clear, concise, complete and confident in your communications.

Most technical professionals avoided writing classes but now find that to succeed, they must be able to put their ideas and information in writing. Emails, reports, proposals, recommendations, and business cases are still the most effective way we deliver information. How you communicate is what will differentiate you and your organization from your competition.

• Create a confident image by sharpening writing style
• Develop a clear, concise and complete writing style
• Identify and focus the reader's attention on the main message
• Understand the purpose for communicating  (informative vs persuasive)
• Differentiate between "need to know" and "nice to know" information
• Use the Active Voice to make your information easier to understand
• Write effective email
• Use acronyms and abbreviations correctly
• Create a personal, professional and comfortable tone
• Write short reports – incident, field trip, inspections, progress and project completion
  

• Eliminate wordy expressions
• Write reports for multiple-audience readers with different levels of subject knowledge
• Organize and write longer reports
• Write justifications, investigations, and recommendations
• Write procedures and instructions
• Write short proposals to convey an idea, suggestion, or change report
• Structure proposals of varying lengths
• Write an effective executive summary
• Use Information Design techniques to increase the readability of a report