Technical Writing, a form of technical communication, is a style of formal writing and business communication, used in fields as diverse as computer hardware and software, chemistry, the aerospace industry, robotics, finance, consumer electronics, and biotechnology. Good technical writing clarifies technical jargon; that is, it presents useful information that is clear and easy to understand for the intended audience.
#31901
A Career in Technical Writing: Beach Time
Beach time and bench time refer to paid or unpaid time off between consulting contracts. When you are a contractor, it is best to take initiative and find other options no matter how much you trust your recruiter. Never trust a company to have your best interests in mind.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2008). Careers>Unemployment>Freelance>Technical Writing
#31898
A Career in Technical Writing: Life as a Wannabee
I couldn’t picture myself as a big time advertising writer, but technical writer was something that I figured I could do. I had plenty of computer experience. Half of my personal debt was related to computer equipment. I had been on the Internet since before there was a World Wide Web. I had a degree in creative writing and I had been an editor and writer for a few minor publications. Technical writer seemed obtainable.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2008). Careers>Writing>Technical Writing
#31899
A Career in Technical Writing: Two Dates to the Prom
In the world of contracting, the entire hiring process can take place over the phone. Knowing the right tool (even a little) can get you the job.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2008). Careers>Freelance>Technical Writing
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A Career in Technical Writing: What Can You Expect? 
What can you expect from a career in technical writing? The answer depends on a couple of factors. Specifically, will you be a lone technical writer or part of a technical writing team? Will you be a freelance technical writer or an employee?
Docsymmetry (2003). Careers>TC>Writing>Technical Writing
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Career Outlook for Technical Writers and Editors
The U.S. Dept. of Labor’s 'Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2002-03 Edition, Writers and Editors,' is recommended reading for those considering technical writing as a profession. Some of the main points highlighted in the handbook make interesting reading.
Klariti (2003). Careers>TC>Writing>Technical Writing
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Career Outlook for Technical Writers to 2010
Most professional writing jobs still require a college degree either in the liberal arts with a preference for Communications, Journalism, and English. Competition is expected to be less for lower paying, entry-level jobs. Writers who fail to gain better paying jobs usually can transfer readily to communications-related jobs in other occupations.
Klariti (2007). Careers>TC>Technical Writing
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Careers For English Majors: Where Are They And How Can Departments Help?
The market for English majors is poor; yet with concentration, awareness of skills, strong support, and sufficient information, recent graduates and career changers can find excellent positions. In 1980, after performing two surveys of the career paths of 550 humanities majors and publishing a guide to career options, I resigned my academic post and began a full year of part-time teaching, medical and technical editing, and several other jobs, including career counseling. As a career counselor I collaborated with another former academic to develop a variation on the familiar career seminar for humanities majors.
Trzyna, Thomas. ADE Bulletin (1983). Careers>Writing>Technical Writing
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Careers for Professional Writing Majors
A short article about careers in technical and professional communication.
Aronson, Anne. Metropolitan State University (2005). Careers>Writing>Technical Writing
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Contrary to what many people assume, work as a technical writer involves much more than sitting alone at your PC. The job requires plenty of contact with technical professionals, from programmers to project managers, to write and design documentation for software. Solitary? Not quite. Collaborative? Most definitely.
Hoffman, Allan. Monster.com (2001). Careers>Writing
#14067
The Case for Writing Studies as a Major Discipline 
Literate activity, directly and indirectly, occupies much of the day of people in modern society. Literacy in its basic and more elaborated, specialized forms is the cornerstone in the education of the young. Literacy and symbolic artifacts underlay the information age and its information economy. Literacy along with its enabling technologies and consequent forms of social, political, and economic organization, has supported ways of life that distinguish us from humans of 5000 years ago. Literate engagement is also associated with forms of belief, commitment, and consciousness that shape modern personality. Yet the study of writing--its production, its circulation, its uses, its role in the development of individuals and societies, and its learning by individuals, social collectives, and historically emergent cultures--remains a dispersed enterprise. Inquiry into skills, practices, objects, and consequences of reading and writing is the concern of only a few people, fragmented across university disciplines, with no serious home of its own.
Bazerman, Charles. UCSB (2002). Articles>Education>Writing
#14020
Catching up with Professor Nate: The Problem with Sociolinguisitics in Composition Research
In Professional Academic Writing, Susan Peck MacDonald makes the observation that recent debates in rhetoric and composition about whether to initiate students into disciplinary practices or 'resist' current practices have frequently been framed in terms of 'accommodation' versus 'resistance,' and adds that 'these may be destructive dichotomies for us to be working with' particularly 'given the lack of close rhetorical and linguistic scrutiny we have spent on describing the nature, variation, or effects of textual practices in the humanities and social sciences'. When a field finds itself trapped in a particular dichotomy, it's time to re-examine research methods and agendas.
Prendergast, Catherine. JAC (1997). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing
#20471
Have you been told, perhaps by your computerised grammar checker, that too many of your sentences are passive? Have you heard the rule of thumb that at least 80 percent of the sentences in any passage should be active? If you've had the problem or heard the rule, and wonder what the terms active and passive mean, and why one is good and the other frowned on, this article is for you.
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The Cautious Writer, 2005: Protect Your Income
I'm no expert on the economy, but I don’t see a lot of signs of growth and smiling faces in 2005. As writers, we are in the fortunate position of being able to protect ourselves against fluctuations in the economy, to some degree. To protect your own income over the next year, here are some suggestions.
Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing
#14461
Centering in on Professional Choices 
I examine my involvement with writing centers as an example of how we can look at the choices we’ve made within our areas of expertise to see why they attract us. In my case, the flexible, collaborative, individualized, non-evaluative, experimental, non-hierarchical, student-centered nature of writing centers is an excellent fit.
Harris, Muriel. CCC (2001). Articles>Writing>Workplace
#25030
CEO Blogs: Polish Them Up Please
CEO Blogs should be vastly superior to any other run of the mill blogs on the web. But in many cases, they're worse. Discover 10 common errors made by CEO bloggers and how to correct them. Plus, a link to a wiki-compiled list of current CEO blogs.
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2005). Articles>Writing>Public Relations>Blogging
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Changes In the Training of Writing Teachers
English departments are once again confronted with charges in the popular media that the illiteracy of the American people generally, and of recent high school graduates in particular, constitutes a disturbing or perhaps even a dangerous state which we should regard as having reached 'crisis' proportions. In the past, this public concern has been directed primarily at reading ability, but in its present form, it focuses on writing skill. Not surprisingly, much of the commentary has been directed at elementary and secondary school teachers. Time emblazoned the news that 'Teachers Can't Teach' across the cover of its June 16, 1980, issue, then devoted several pages to a critical analysis of the shortcomings in modern American education. The authors of that article estimated that up to twenty percent of certified teachers have not mastered the 'basic skills' that they are supposed to teach.1 If this estimate is accurate—and most Americans believe, intuitively at least that it is—then we must recognize that not only are teachers unskilled in areas outside their expertise, but also, more frightening, they are incompetent within areas in which they ostensibly are trained. And since, as Charles Moran and J. T. Skerrett recently pointed out two of the three traditional Rs of basic education are within the province of the English teachers, we must be particularly sensitive to the criticism presently being leveled at teacher inability.
Ward, Jay A. JAC (1981). Articles>Education>Writing
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Changing the Center of Gravity: Collaborative Writing Program Administration in Large Universities 
Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.
Johnson-Sheehan, Richard D. and Charles Paine. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Education>Writing>Collaboration
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Changing the Way the Profession Communicates: A Workshop for Prospective Journal Authors
This session will help participants understand how to write and submit a manuscript for publication in Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, its audience, and suggestions for choosing topics, doing research, andpreparing a manuscript.
Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Publishing>Writing
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Chico State Writing Style Guide
When editors refer to style, they usually do not mean an individual's writing style; they mean editorial style—the guidelines a publisher uses to enhance the reader's understanding. Editorial style includes the consistent use of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations, as well as the selection of headings and the use of numbers. These guidelines are often called 'conventions' because they represent a conventional presentation used in publishing.
CSU Chico (2002). Reference>Style Guides>Writing
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Choosing the Right Style Manual(s)
Editors should consider at least four points in selecting, or reevaluating, primary and secondary manuals.
Mulford, Carolyn. Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Style Guides>Writing
#20609
Most information on the World Wide Web is gathered in short reference documents that are intended to be read nonsequentially. This is particularly true of sites whose contents are mostly technical or administrative documents. Long before the Web was invented, technical writers discovered that readers appreciate short 'chunks' of information that can be located and scanned quickly.
Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Yale University (1999). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Writing
#28391
Once you have your content, arranged it into a likely architecture, and worked out where it will sit on the page, you're ready to design the display layer.
Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Writing>Rhetoric
#13507
In most writing classrooms, the primary activity is not writing per se, but rather the discussion of writing. You know the drill: as teachers, we create a writing assignment, introduce it during class, ask students if they have any questions, and send them off to work on the assignment. When students return to class with a draft of the assignment, we might discuss it as a class or perhaps put the students through a peer review session. But only rarely do we ask our students to actually write during class.
Palmquist, Mike. Lore (2001). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric
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Classical Rhetoric and Technical Writing
English departments, eager to boost enrollment, may press teachers into duty teaching technical writing courses on short notice and with little preparation.
Lunsford, Andrea A. CCC (1976). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing
