Congratulations! You've completed the pre-class portion of Technical Writing Two, which covered the following intermediate principles of technical writing:
| Section | Lesson |
|---|---|
| Self-editing | |
| Adopt a style guide. | |
| Think like your audience. | |
| Read documents out loud to yourself. | |
| Organizing large docs | |
| Determine whether to organize a large amount of information into a single long document or a collection of shorter documents. | |
| Outline first. Alternatively, write free form and then reorganize. | |
| Introduce a large document by explaining what it covers. | |
| Choose headings that describe the task your reader is working on. | |
| Illustrating | |
| Consider writing the caption before creating the illustration. | |
| Constrain the amount of information in a single drawing. | |
| Focus the reader's attention on the relevant part of a picture or diagram by describing the takeaway in the caption or by adding a visual cue to the picture. | |
| Creating sample code | |
| Create sample code that is accurate, clear, short, easy to understand, and well-commented. | |
| Consider providing not only examples but also anti-examples. | |
| In tutorials, provide code samples that demonstrate a range of complexity. | |
| Using LLMs in tech writing | |
| Construct detailed prompts by defining a role for the LLM, a target audience, a document type, and a specific goal. | |
| Revise documents by prompting an LLM to reorganize content, copy edit for errors, and identify stylistic or logical issues. | |
| Generate concise summaries by identifying the summary's purpose, target audience, and style. |
The in-class component of Technical Writing Two helps you practice intermediate technical writing principles.
If your organization offers the instructor-led portion of Technical Writing Two, you're now ready for that class. If your organization doesn't offer the instructor-led portion of Technical Writing Two, note that Google occasionally offers the course. See the Announcements page for details.