Technical Writing For Dummies

Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts leads business-writing seminars throughout the country and is the author of over 25 books, including 135 Tips for Writing Successful Business Documents. She has appeared on television and radio networks throughout the United States and has been featured and quoted in The New York Times.

• Introduction 1Part 1: What It Takes to Write Technical Docs 5Chapter 1: Working as a Technical Writer 7Chapter 2: Putting Together a Team and a Plan 25Part 2: The Write Stuff 37Chapter 3: Completing a Technical Writing Brief 39Chapter 4: Crafting a Draft 51Chapter 5: Designing Documents to Enhance the User Experience 57Chapter 6: Honing the Tone 85Chapter 7: Fine-Tuning toward the Ideal 97Part 3: Frequently Written Docs 107Chapter 8: Writing User Manuals and More 109Chapter 9: Preparing Abstracts 127Chapter 10: Creating Spec Sheets 133Chapter 11: Generating Questionnaires 141Chapter 12: Preparing for Technical Presentations 149Chapter 13: Abridging for Executive Summaries 159Part 4: Tech Tools 167Chapter 14: Collaborating with Others 169Chapter 15: Videoconferencing 183Chapter 16: Offering eLearning 195Chapter 17: Surfing the Net 211Chapter 18: Protecting Intellectual Property 221Part 5: The Part of Tens 233Chapter 19: Ten Tips for Writing a Whitepaper 235Chapter 20: Ten Tips for Publishing in a Technical Journal 241Chapter 21: Ten Frustrations of Technical Writers 247Appendix A: Punctuation Made Easy 253Appendix B: Grammar’s Not Grueling 265Appendix C: Abbreviations and Metric Equivalents 275Appendix D: Tech Talk: Glossary of Terms 285Appendix E: Technical Writing Brief 289Index 293