Learn methods to focus your technical or professional writing process; make writing tasks easier and produce high-quality deliverables. Learn to convey complex information clearly to users with and without subject-matter expertise.

All public sector writers work with complex information and must translate ideas for others who do not have specialized training or knowledge. That makes you a technical writer! —Join us and gain skills to become a confident, effective public sector writer.

Performance Objectives: Upon completion of this course you should be able to:

• Perform user assessments—you’ll conduct a basic user assessment in this course.
• Write everything with a user focus: write to meet your users’ information needs. 
• Convey complex ideas in simple, clear language. 
• Plan a technical document from draft to final copy. 
• Gain and hold readers’ attention through information design and relevant, clear language. 
• Write without redundancies, jargon, technical clichés, ambiguity, or generalizations. 
• Write in active voice, in every scenario. 
• Use plain-talk compliant information design to achieve your objectives. 
• Boost reading ease and usability with visual devices. 
• Write email that meets readers’ needs with relevant, key information. 
• Decide how and when to represent data visually in tables, graphs, and charts. 
• Use job aids: 10 direct and indirect reporting format templates, planning checklists, user assessment tools, and advice for managing writing projects and teams.

Competencies covered in this course: Written communication

Intended Audience: Public sector technical writers to include engineers, researchers, scientists, medical specialists and their technical office staff; as well as anyone who rewrites, edits, or proofreads technical documents.