Pennsylvania State University: EServer TC Library

1.
#14894

English 497 offers you the opportunity to enhance your skills in planning, inventing, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing technical prose. Most students will develop these skills as they complete a single large project consisting of several parts--perhaps including a technical report and articles written for professional and popular journals. We will emphasize the importance of and strategies for accommodating your presentation to your audience. We will also devote much attention to editing technical prose, yours and your classmates'. Finally, we will recognize that the Web has altered the way that professionals communicate. You will learn to take advantage of the new electronic resources in discovering information and communicating it to others.

Harwood, John T. Pennsylvania State University (1997). Academic>Courses>Undergraduate

3.
#14900

Technical and Professional Communication

We write for many reasons: to entertain, to express our feelings, to persuade others to our belief(s), to inform, and to call others to action. In this course, we will combine these last two to produce ' . . . writing that gets things done: It can convey useful information, or it can implement specific actions . . .' (Woolever, 1999, p. 2). Although you will be learning to produce clear, concisely written, varied forms of technical communication, we will also focus on developing the basic, analytical skills you should utilize each time you produce any technical document. In these you will learn that each writing task can be seen as a problem, one which you will be able to solve by examining the purpose of the document and the needs of your audience--what kind of information they need and in what format that information will be best understood and acted upon. As the following graphic indicates, you can think of technical communication as a way to bridge the gap between technical information and your audience, using language as the material and format, organization, and style as your tools.

Jones, Billie J. Pennsylvania State University (1999). Academic>Courses>Undergraduate

4.
#14899

Technical Writing

ENGL 202C, Technical Writing, serves students who are preparing for careers in the sciences and applied sciences (particularly engineering). This advanced course in writing familiarizes students with the discourse practices prized in their disciplinary and institutional communities—and helps them to manage those practices effectively in their own written work. In this way the course teaches those writing strategies and tactics that scientists and engineers will need in order to write successfully on the job.

Jones, Billie J. Pennsylvania State University (2002). Academic>Courses>Undergraduate>Technical Writing