The goal of this lesson is to prepare for the writing projects that comprise each of the lessons that follow. You will see how to tailor your writing to a particular audience and purpose.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Plan a writing strategy for each lesson that follows
• Write for a specific type of audience, such as business decision makers or technicians
• Analyze a task to decompose it into steps for your reader
• Identify the appropriate format and style for a project
• Plan a document that is well-crafted, targeted and suited to your audience

The goal of this lesson is to write a proposal that combines persuasive elements and factual presentation, to convince reviewers to award you a contract or buy your services.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Interpret the component parts for a request for proposal (RFP) document, to understand what to include in your proposal
• Design a proposal with an attractive layout, including white space, art, tables, and headings
• Write a proposal with an appropriate structure and style, based on the needs of the specific project and the standards followed in the industry
• Make the logic of your proposal clear and persuasive
• Revise proposals to make them more effective

The goal of this lesson is to use data in your writing. Data can be numbers, presented in a table or interspersed in your text. It can also be displayed visually, in charts and graphs. The ideal presentation has numbers as well as visuals, and text that describes what the data mean.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Integrate charts and graphs into your writing, to reach readers visually and show data in a compact form
• Use numbers in your writing to back up observations with fact and guide the reader through the data
• Apply parallelism and consistent structure, to make it easy to follow your reasoning
• Use the most common parts of a data report, including the abstract and results sections, to organize your information
• Create a clear and effective data report

The goal of this lesson is to write for a type of audience that pursues new ideas and new knowledge. The audience may be academic, or it may be a professional group that wants to advance findings and debate in its field. Research writing requires a style that is brief and to the point, and which conforms to the highly specific requirements of the publication to which it is submitted.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Recognize the range of styles used in research writing, from objective to first-person
• Create the major sections of a research report, from abstract to conclusion, with appropriate content
• Use citations of other peoples’ research to support your thesis with established facts
• Communicate with a readership that requires a very concise style of writing
• Write a research paper for publication in a scholarly or professional journal

The goal of this lesson is to write a how-to guide that can lead someone through a procedure from start to finish.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Focus on making your procedures easy to follow for all types of readers, including those with limited reading skills
• Add graphic art to your text to illustrate your points, including such things as photos and charts
• Use formatting and layout for emphasis and readability, with emphasis on important points and ample white space
• Use simple verb forms, with as many verbs as possible in the simple present form, to improve readability
• Analyze a task to create a list of steps for completing it
• Write a procedure that is easy to follow

The goal of this lesson is to get started writing a user guide that helps someone understand a complex product. In this lesson, you will plan the flow of your document based on the work flow of someone using the product. In a later lesson, you will fill in one section of the user guide with content.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Do a task analysis to break down any procedure into its parts
• Structure content into chapters and sections to give readers appropriately sized units
• Align your chapters with the subject matter so that the flow of the book follows the flow of the work
• Understand the features that distinguish a chapter from other types of section
• Create an outline for a user guide

The goal of this lesson is to write content for a user guide. You will complete one section of the outline you created in the previous lesson, when you planned the structure of a large user guide.


Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Guide the user towards practical outcomes in completing their tasks
• Make good use of lists, for procedural steps and materials
• Describe the features of the product you are documenting
• Use graphic layout and art effectively
• Create a typical section of a user guide

The goal of this lesson is to write instructional material that develops a user’s skills or knowledge.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Plan a training program that satisfies the needs of your students and meets clear objectives
• Develop examples of procedures that use realistic details
• Design exercises that allow students to practice procedures
• Evaluate student progress in learning new skills with quizzes and tests
• Choose an optimal delivery method for training, whether digital or in-person
• Write curriculum for a training program

The goal of this lesson is to write a magazine article that conveys technical information in an engaging way for a general audience.

Objectives

When you have finished this lesson, you will be able to:

• Write a story in a format that makes it newsworthy and easy to read quickly
• Blend numbers and anecdotal information and accounts, to strike a balance between general facts and specific experiences
• Incorporate case histories into articles to illustrate points with real-world examples
• Strategize for working with subject matter experts by understanding what motivates technical experts to share their knowledge
• Write a short magazine article that, with development, might be publishable