#18710
An intensive training session on how to write clear, crisp, persuasive copy for letters, memos, proposals, reports, and other business documents.
Bly, Robert W. Bly.com. Academic>Course Materials>Writing>Business Communication
#18709
An intensive training session on how to write clear, crisp, technically accurate copy for letters, memos, proposals, reports, articles, papers, and other technical documents.
#15046
ENGL XXX: Technical Communication 
A sample syllabus for instructors who plan to use Mike Markel's Technical Communication textbook.
Markel, Mike. Bedford-St. Martin's. Academic>Course Materials>TC
#14284
The ability to recognize effective correspondence is valuable. It will not only allow you to assess what may have gone wrong in a transaction, but also to plan for better communication in the future. Professional communicators understand the importance of being critical about their writing. They are able to evaluate the documents they produce, recognize potential problems, and make the necessary adjustments. They can also appreciate well written documents, learning communication strategies that they might use in the future. In this exercise you will practice your ability to evaluate correspondence. Using the criteria outlined in Chapter 14 (“Correspondence”) of Technical Communication, 5e, you will analyze a letter sent to a professional journal in your discipline. You will present your analysis in a memo written to your instructor, so you will have an opportunity to develop your own correspondence writing style.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Correspondence>Evaluation
#14282
Process explanations have become an important part of the workplace. However, professionals don’t create process explanations only for auditors. Process explanations are used to communicate sequential activities to a variety of audiences and for many different reasons. As Technical Communication, 5e illustrates in Chapter 12 (“Creating Process Explanations”), several forms of process explanations exist, though they have some common characteristics that you should be familiar with. In this exercise you will revise a set of detailed instructions into a process explanation. You have to decide what type of information is most appropriate for your audience and the purpose of your document.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Writing
#14336
Finding, Narrowing, Outlining Topics
In a technical-writing course, the ideal starting place is a workplace problem requiring some writing as part or all of the solution. With such a project, the audience and problem are there to help you narrow the topic. However, if you begin with a topic, it's harder to narrow. You are likely to end up with ten-pound textbook on automotive plastics, residential solar energy in the home, or La Niña. Narrow the topic and some careful research—the result will be a practical, useful document that doesn't go on forever. Narrowing means selecting a portion of a larger topic: for example, selecting a specific time period, event, place, people, type, component, use or application, cause or effect, and so on. Narrowing also means deciding on the amount of detail to use in discussing those topics.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides
#14280
A document’'s format leads readers to expect certain types of information. A memo format suggests something different from a newspaper column. Your task as a workplace professional is to meet the reader’s expectations by presenting information that readers need in an appropriate format. This computer file contains the description of a golf ball, written by a student who is an avid golfer. You can edit and format this description (or a selected portion of it) for a specific audience.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#19233
Your company manufactures 'dress' sneakers—fancy athletic footwear that is designed as 'business' rather than 'athletic' apparel. Because of increasingly informal corporate attire policies, your company has experienced phenomenal success, and now wishes to expand internationally. But where first?
Lannon, John M. Pearson Education (2003). Academic>Course Materials>International
#14331
Grammar Exercises: Fragments, Comma Splices, Agreement, Parallelism
Select the sentence that avoids errors in grammar (you may have to scroll to see all of the items), and then press the Click here ... button.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Interactive
#20669
A collection of technical illustrations submitted and collected by professional technical illustrators.
VisualJournalism. Academic>Course Materials>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration
#14274
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 
When you take a document and put it on a computer and make it available for people to look at with their Web browsers, their browsers read the text of the document, but ignore the format. The browsers ignore places where you hit return, put words in boldface and italics, skipped lines, made headings, etc. In order to make headings, italics, etc., you must code your documents with HTML. This file contains codes and examples of HTML that will help you learn the basics you need to start constructing your own Web pages.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>HTML
#29951
Interactive Editing and Revision Exercises
These example exercises are intended to help you better understand how to write paragraphs according to the five patterns of organization listed above. Each example exercise is followed by an assignment that asks you to use the example exercises and the textbook as a guide in writing paragraphs that are clear and well organized.
Dobrin, Sidney I., Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. TCTC. Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#10721
International Technical Communication
Here are four case studies in international technical communication that I've used as teaching tools in my course World-Ready Information Products. These are real and current case studies, although I have altered some facts and added others to disguise the companies and focus the cases a bit more. I include suggested solutions to Case 3 and Case 4, courtesy of professional technical communicators who attended my post-conference workshop at the annual Society for Technical Communication (STC) conference in May 1997, Toronto, Canada. The opinions expressed are those of the workshop partipants. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions, policy, or attitude of the Society for Technical Communication.
#27490
Introduction to Technical Writing
An introduction to technical writing, with outlined notes about writing clearly.
Gallagher, Karin. rpbourret.com (2000). Academic>Course Materials>Writing>Technical Writing
#22469
Many people look for jobs today by logging on to the Internet; after all, there are well over 100,000 companies on the Web today, and many of these companies post job listings on the Internet. Many other organizations that don't have Web sites use online services to publicize their job openings. This is particularly true in computer-related fields, but, increasingly, companies in other fields are using the Internet to find potential employees.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Interviewing
#19231
Divide the fallacies listed equally among group members. Members must write a page on each of their assigned fallacies, explaining them clearly and providing at least five examples. Each site provides some examples already; you may use three examples from the site, but must find at least two examples from everyday usage. You may look in newspapers, on TV, or on other Web sites that do not deal with logical fallacies. Take turns reading each report to your group.
Lannon, John M. Pearson Education (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Rhetoric
#27796
Manual for Teaching HU333 at Michigan Tech
A manual to introduce new instructors to issues they must consider during the term prior to teaching Technical Communication.
Michigan Tech University (1998). Academic>Course Materials>TC
#14967
Observing and Analyzing Faculty Webpages
You are going to build a webpage for a faculty member within the next few weeks. The intention of this assignment is to help you determine what makes an effective webpage for a faculty member—in general, as well as for faculty in a particular discipline.
Wysocki, Anne Frances. Michigan Tech University (2002). Academic>Course Materials>Undergraduate
#31099
The following includes the instructions for creating a model of a small help project and how to name and send it to your instructor.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2004). Academic>Course Materials>Documentation>Help
#14334
This section was part of a chapter made up of the following: Content—provides strategies for thinking of useful content for writing projects, in other words, developing the content of a project. Organization—provides strategies for reviewing the sequence and arrangement of the contents of a writing project. Transitions—provides review strategies for checking the coherence of a writing project, in other words, the 'flow' of the project as created by the transitions.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides
#14278
Just as Socrates said, ‘Every discourse must be organized, like a living being . . .,’ a document must be organized in a logical, coherent fashion, with its parts ‘composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole.’ Although research has led to more sophisticated guidelines for creating reader-based documents, Socrates’ principles are still valuable. Writing organized, coherent documents is still a primary goal for technical writers—one you should follow as you develop your professional writing style. This file contains text about the refining, bleaching, and deodorizing processes of sunflowerseed oil. Your task is to make this text more organized and coherent so that readers will understand the process.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#14277
Organizing Sentences into Paragraphs
This exercise will give you practice in organizing sentences into effective paragraphs. This computer file contains 12 sentences that you need to group, order, and connect so that you can create coherent, cohesive paragraphs.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Writing
#14271
Organizing Visual and Verbal Information
For this exercise, you will create a two-panel brochure about carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) that could be distributed with other medical literature in your campus’s health center. The text and visual aids you will use are contained in this file, though they will require significant modifications using design principles presented in Technical Communication/5e.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Visual>Visual Rhetoric
#14600
The purpose of the peer review is twofold: First, the suggestions you give to your peers should help them revise their papers. Second, carefully reading others' work should help you better reevaluate your own writing.
Charney, Davida. University of Texas. Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#14324
Power Tools for Technical Communication
You may find this website rather different from the obligatory websites for other textbooks. I've packed in nearly 200 exercises, quizzes, projects, and other sorts of activities that will keep your students busy all semester!
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>TC
