Home Page for Technical Writing & Editing Tips for College Students & Others.

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This site is designed for students in college-level technical writing classes and for those who would like to learn more about improving their writing and editing abilities. This site also includes links to quality Web sites that provide tips on other types of writing. We hope you enjoy our site.

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Templates

• This section is being written. For now, go to Wordsworth's templates page for more information.

General Technical Writing Tips

We have designed several pages to help you, depending on the topic you are interested in. See below to find the page you need!

STYLE AND Style Guides

• Writing a Company Style Guide
• Outline for a Company Style Guide (PDF)
• See Wordsworth's Templates Page for a Company Style Guide (99 pages).
• APA Style tips and links
• Other Styles (Chicago, MLA, AP, and more) - tips and links

BUSINESS WRITING TIPS

• Go to our business writing tips page here. Includes memos, letters, short reports, and much more!

Report & manual Writing Tips

• Go to our Technical Report Writing Tips Page by clicking here.

Proposal AND GRANT Writing Tips

• Go to our proposal writing tips page.

SPELLING

• Click here to go to our spelling page, including commonly misspelled words and a link to a spelling quiz.

mechanics (GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION) & editing tips

• Go to our mechanics page here, which describes technical editing, proofreading, and grammar and punctuation (and links to free online grammar quizzes).

OTHER TYPES OF WRITING

• Go to our Web page to learn about other types of writing, such as creative writing, songwriting, writing for the Internet, and more.

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

• Go to our Web page for general rules written by Dr. Oswald, how to use properly, and online sources for finding the correct definitions.

USEFUL LINKS

• Go to our links page with lots of great resources for technical writers and editors!

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Recommended Books

A Technical Writing Textbook (Examples)

• Introduction to Technical Writing: Process and Practice by Lois Johnson Rew

• An English Handbook (Example):

• Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers with APA Updates & Companion Website Subscription (6th Edition)

  A College Dictionary:Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Ed) by Merriam Webster

A Style Manual:
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Find out how to purchase a Wordsworth's Technical Editing Style Manual created in Microsoft Word (99 pages) by clicking here. We will e-mail it to you right away!

For sample text from our Technical Editing Style Guide, see below:

5.9 MEASUREMENTS

• Use figures (i.e., don’t spell out) for numbers that refer to measurements: 8 cm wide, 9 percent, 8 years old, 5-mg dose, 4 miles, 6 minutes, 3 inches, 7 acres.
• Spell out simple units in the text, such as inch, acre, liter, minute, and year. But if they are part of a complex unit, use the abbreviation (define first use just as you would with any abbreviation): ft/min, mg/L.
• Abbreviated measurements are written the same whether singular or plural. For example, lb can refer to both pound and pounds.
• Most measurement abbreviations do not take a period. Some do, however (in. for inch). See the list of measurement abbreviations in Section 9.0 to be sure.

5.10 NUMBERS

• Generally, spell out numbers less than 10 (one, three), and use numerals for 10 and higher (14, 256).
• Always use numerals to express measurement (2 feet, 4 mg/L, 7 gmp, 5 pore volumes), time (10 p.m.), parts of a document (Chapter 4, Phase 4, Section 2, Item 3, Table 6-1, Figure 2-3), money ($3 million), very large numbers followed by million or billion (7 million), percentages and decimal fractions (3 percent, 3.14, 1.2), and ratios (1 to 10).
• When two or more numbers are listed in a group in the same sentence, and one or more is 10 or more, use numerals for all:
- The laboratory evaluated 7 of the 12 samples.
? The contractor drilled 12 borings to a depth of 70 feet and completed 4 of the 12 borings as vapor extraction wells.
- The contractor drilled six borings to a depth of 70 feet and completed four of the six borings as vapor extraction wells.
• Spell out all numbers that start a sentence: Twelve test holes were analyzed. You can also rewrite the sentence to move the number: Company Name analyzed 12 test holes.
• When numbers appear together in the same phrase, it is often a good practice to express one as a word and one as a number: Company Name purchased fourteen 8-inch pipes. But not in a list: Company Name purchased 6-, 8-, and 12-inch pipes.
• Use a comma in numbers larger than 999: 12,000, 9,000, 800.
• Use Arabic (1, 2, 3), not Roman (I, II, III), numbers for figures, illustrations, and tables.
• Change Roman numerals to Arabic in references, even when Roman numerals are used in the work itself: (USEPA Region 10, Phase 3)

REVISING

Revising Tip No. 1: Reorganizing

After you write something, check the organization. Here is an easy tip how to do that and to make sure you are not being redundant and that everything is in the place it should be. Try making subheadings throughout (you don't have to keep them all or any of them...or you might choose to keep them). This way you can check to be sure every paragraph is in the correct section. For example, for an influenza article, once I made subheadings, I noticed that symptoms appeared as a topic in two paragraphs in separate sections of the article, and that same thing happened twice more with other topics. Therefore, I had to move things around and delete some paragraphs that were redundant. So again, just make subheadings and then go through paragraph by paragraph to make sure everything's in the right section and there aren't any redundancies.

Revising Tip No. 2: Paragraphing (Topic Sentences and Support)

Related to the above: Make sure that you have a topic sentence for each paragraph, and that everything in the rest of that paragraph relates to or supports that topic sentence. You should not have more than one topic in a paragraph.

PREWRITING

Prewriting Tip No. 1: The Triad

Before writing, write down your audience, purpose, and topic. This will help organize your thoughts beforehand and help you find your focus.

More to come! Keep checking back! And e-mail your suggestions by clicking here

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