This document provides an introduction to technical writing and presentation skills. It discusses the differences between academic and technical writing, including their purposes and audiences. Technical writing aims to get something done by communicating clearly to readers who know less about the topic than the writer. The document outlines the characteristics of effective technical writing, including clarity, comprehensiveness, conciseness, and correctness. It also discusses the theory of good design in technical documents and provides tips for writing instructions, reports, and presentations in a professional manner.

1. An
Introduction
to
Technical Writing &
Presentation Skills
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2. Objectives
You need to be able to:
• Know differences between academic and technical writing.
• Identify the characteristics of effective technical writing.
• Identify the steps in the writing process.
• Identify the components of good design.
• Identify the steps in organizing and writing instructions.
• Identify some tips to help your documents.
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3. Academic vs. Technical Writing
Purpose:
Knowledge of
Topic:
Audience:
Criteria for
Evaluation:
Academic
Demonstrate what you
know about a topic
Less than teacher who is
evaluating them
Teacher
Depth, logic, clarity, unity
and grammar
Technical
Getting something done
More than the reader
Several People
Clear and simple
organization of ideas
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4. What is Technical Writing?
“Technical writing is the art, craft, practice,
or problem of translating that which is
logical into that which is grammatical.
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5. What is Technical Writing?
“Technical writing conveys specific information about a
technical subject to a specific audience for a specific
purpose…The words and graphics of technical writing
are meant to be practical: that is, to communicate a body
of factual information that will help an audience
understand a subject or carry out a task.”
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6. Characteristics of Effective
Technical Writing
The four C’s:
• Clarity -- it is easily understood by your intended
audience
• Comprehensiveness -- all of the necessary
information is present
• Conciseness -- it is clear without excess verbiage
• Correctness -- it is grammatical and follows
conventions
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7. Theory of Design
Good design is:
1. Visually simple and uncluttered.
2. Highlights structure, hierarchy(according to their
importance), and order.
3. Helps readers find information they need.
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8. Writing
• Write positive language.
• Don’t write in upper case for more than A WORD
OR TWO.
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9. Writing (cont.)
• Use lists whenever possible.
• Use the title to define the task.
• Use headings and subheadings.
• Label segments in away that reflects how readers
are likely to think about the operation or procedure.
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10. The Written Report: Why?
• The medium for most technical communication is
the written report, so you had better be good at it!
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11. Some characteristics of reports
1. Everybody hates to write them,
2. Everybody hates to read them,
3. Almost nobody does read them,
4. They take a HUGE amount of time to write,
5. They are absolutely CRUCIAL (extremely
important or necessary ) to YOUR success
in engineering!
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12. Further characteristics of reports
They are also almost always:
6. Too long,
7. Badly organized,
8. Incomplete.
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13. Basic Technical Overview
• Professionalism and ethics in reporting
• Knowing your audience
• Outline writing
• Report writing
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14. Professionalism & ethics in reporting
• Different individuals have different
personalities, and different modes for
communicating.
• If you apply a canned formula to your
technical communications, the result may be
awkward.
• Within the general structure of formal
technical communication, there is room for
your personality to show through.
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15. Outline Your Writing Purpose
• Why am I presenting this work? What do I
want the audience to get out of this paper or
this presentation?
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16. Write the Report, but how long?
• The length of your presentation - either written
or oral - is often dictated by others.
• With respect to oral presentations, you will
often find yourself up against a strict time limit:
 Be sure that you can get your take-home message
across without hurrying
• Hint: carefully rehearse your talk with a stop-
watch in hand…
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17. Common Report Formats
There are a number of accepted formats for any
type of document that you write, but…
The commonly accepted standard for reports is
IMRaD - Introduction - Methods - Results - and
Discussion.
Note: Your reports do not necessarily need to
follow this format strictly, but should use this as a
guideline, and contain all of the information
discussed in.
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18. • Objectives: Enhance language skills and develop critical thinking
• Course Contents
• Presentation skills
• Essay writing
• Descriptive, narrative, discursive, argumentative
• Academic writing
• How to write a proposal for research paper/term paper
• How to write a research paper/term paper (emphasis on style, content,
• language, form, clarity, consistency)
• Technical Report writing
• Progress report writing
• Note: Extensive reading is required for vocabulary building
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19. THANK YOU
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