Description of The Portable Technical Writer
by William Murdick and Jonathan Bloemker

Houghton Mifflin, 2001, 326 pages; 14 chapters.  Sells at most stores for $13.95 plus S&H.

Click here to see the table of contents.
 

The Portable Technical Writer can serve as the main textbook for a college course in technical writing. It presents technical writing as a fully developed profession, separate from business writing, though it does cover the routine business documents that all professionals write. The authors believe that not only those headed for a career in technical writing, but also those who will simply be doing some technical writing as part of their work as scientists or technicians, can benefit from learning the methods of professional technical writers.
      Specifically, The Portable Technical Writer  does the following:

• Uses a lean style to present large amounts of information in an inexpensive package
• Presents 26 ideas for extended projects, as well as a writing process and a quality check list for projects; shorter writing assignments follow each subsection in each chapter
• Establishes a fictional telecommunications company as a context for technical writing tasks taught in the book
• Provides detailed coverage of technical style and rhetoric
• Besides the usual short documents, teaches how to design and develop long documents, such as manuals and RFP proposals
• Presents basic aesthetic principles for the design of marketing publications, such as brochures and Web pages
• Includes professional editing, proofreading, and indexing as part of technical writing
• Covers many of the contemporary topics in technical writing, including the object-oriented writing process, Simplified English, style guides, electronic and software tools, minimalism, usability and field testing, online documentation, and Web site design

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