Our Course

Question:I am interested in your on line Technical Writer course but want to check if it is the right course for me. Essentially I have been working as a Technical Writer now for more than three years producing User Guides for a software company and I am looking for a course that will advance my existing skills and also help me check that what I am currently doing is not a million miles off the mark.

I have had no previous formal Technical Writing training but have had to learn on the job, which has involved a great deal of research (mainly on the Web) in order to improve our existing manuals and ensure they follow generally accepted Technical Writing practices.

I need a course I can complete on-line in my own time that will not only teach me the basic principles of Technical Writing, which I feel I should know by now, but more importantly how to ensure our manuals are of the highest standard and that the way they are produced is efficient and practical.

I use FrameMaker 8 to produce our User Guides and at present we do not produce any on-line guides and therefore I have no experience with Robo-Help or similar.

Can you advise if the course you provide would contain enough advanced content to benefit me and my employer?

Answer:Nobody arrives at point B of knowing how to do state-of-the-art technical writing on their own, from their own research.

Most good tech writers worked in a couple of technical publications departments at fairly large software companies where a tech pubs manager and probably an editor in the department showed them this very unique style of writing—so totally different than how everyone else writes letters, reports, English papers, or magazine articles.

Back in 1997, our owner, Dorothy Webster, gathered together a very large group of her top contract tech writers (who she placed in jobs over the years) and paid them to specify exactly what they did in order to write easy-to-follow instructions. She then made the 27 best-tech-writing rules they all agreed upon into a ‘brick and mortar’ school, which we ran for eight years. We graduated 385 students, many of whom still work in the field in the SF Bay Area.

Our online course reflects the main guidelines this course taught, such as:

• Write only active verbs
• Write in present tense only (no wills)
• Write in numbered steps
• Write task-based headings
• Write only what people most likely want to DO with the software (and nothing else)
• Use formatting principles that ensure easy reading

Question: I'm interested in your technical writing course - but I'm a little distressed that there are so few jobs on your site presently. As you know, a myriad of technical writing programs exist and yours makes sense to me because I would have two instruction manuals when I leave. Can you put me in touch with anyone who's taken your course? Do you help with job placement afterwards?

Answer: You’re absolutely right. American companies have stopped hiring any worker—including technical writers (unless that tech writer can also write Java programming code). Our placement agency last got an order for a tech writer last August, in Austin, Texas. We gave them the perfect tech writer, they hired her, she’s still working there—and that’s it! Nothing since last August. And this after many, many years of companies typing technical writer and finding www.Techwriters.com . One of our large telecom clients recently laid off a tech writer we had working there because they’re sending all of the writing TO CHINA. People work for pennies per hour in China. I can tell you this; whatever job you do find will involve writing of e-mails, reports, possibly procedures, meeting minutes, proposals, bids, assessments, and this course GREATLY improves the quality of your writing. To the point that—if you take it, learn the writing rules Dorothy Webster teaches in this course, and follow them—people in your company will take notice of you, think you’re very smart, definitely management material, and you very well may get a promotion. Truly. These days, your e-mails you write show people your intelligence level and education level. When people write very correct English, readers perceive that they have a high degree of education, professionalism, and potential within the company. And maybe someday all of the thousands of companies that make software, chips, medical and other kinds of big (and small) equipment will want to give their customers instructions that work. But not now. Now the engineers, or people in China, Romania, or India write the user instructions. They do not know how to do this at all, but that does not matter to the companies. Will American companies ever hire American workers again? We do not know.

Question:Does your course provide CPE or any kind of professional ed credit? When was this course originally designed? Is it current to today's expectations?

Answer: Our company places technical writers in jobs, nation wide, and we have done for 20 years, so we know what employers of technical writers want to see: writing samples of user instructions ‘up to code.’ Most community colleges and even university programs that provide an education credit do not teach you how to write customer instructions, nor require that you write them. In our course, you do get a certificate of completion—if you get a grade of C or higher on the two manuals you write and submit. But mainly, you learn how to write instructions—unique writing that only writers of cookbook recipes know how to do. Plus, we teach you how to fix common English writing mistakes that many people make, such as always telling your reader what an acronym like CPE stands for.

We teach students in our online course how to write user instructions for hardware and software, then we have you actually write two manuals, you submit them, we edit them for you so you can have sample manuals ‘up to code.’ The desired writing style remains the same, which keeps our course relevant and current. The tools change. Tech writers use FrameMaker and RoboHelp less now, and might type into Microsoft’s SharePoint or into a wiki, which has the same user interface as Word. It’s not about the tools used, it’s about the writing style, which our course teaches.

Technical writing resembles photography. If you want a job as a wedding photographer, you have to show a client wedding photographs. If you want a job writing customer instructions for a high-tech product, you have to show customer instructions you wrote for a high-tech product.

Our course fills that need.

We hope you take it, and learn this very, very different kind of writing, technical writing.

Question: My undergraduate degree is in Finance, my masters degree is in education with an emphasis on curriculum and instruction. I've been a Credit Analyst for 15 years and a 6th grade Language Arts teacher for 7 years.

I was planning on getting an Associates Degree in Technical Communication at the community college to get the classroom training I would need.

Do you think I would make it as a Technical Writer? I do a lot of writing as a part of my job (primarily Credit Analysis memos), but I would not consider myself a writer. I do not have any background in IT or software; however, I do learn software programs quickly.

I was just wondering if this is something I should pursue. I was looking for a job I could do at home (virtual office) and make a decent salary. I've always thought that I could communicate well and Technical Communications looks very interesting and exciting to me.

Answer:Your degree in finance and your job experience as a credit analyst positions you very nicely to write instructions for a company making financial software (such as Oracle). You just need some sample manuals to show a prospective employer. Tech writers write very, very differently than other writers. You have to learn the unique style we use when writing a software user guide or procedures for bank personnel. Thus, our online course, ‘How to Do Tech Writing’ on www.Techwriters.com .

You can attend classes at a community college for two years, but college professors usually do not know what a technical writer must write, or how they must write it. Thus, you will not get any relevant, impressive user guide or online Help samples for all of the money and time you spend attending (most) community college classes and paying their tuition.

Whether you make it as a technical writer depends on whether you can read, absorb, and apply the 36 rules we teach (in eight modules) to get you to practice writing the very unique, unusual way good tech writers write. In this field, to get a job, you have o show samples—the right kind of samples. Our course helps you produce the sample instructions people who need a tech writer want to see.

You need to take this course to learn what to capitalize, how to use possessive apostrophes—all the writing in correct English we teach in this course. Writing correct, straightforward English makes you sound more authoritative, educated, competent, and gets you a raise in your PRESENT job.

No one’s going to hire you to work as a technical writer, 100% from home, at first. You have to log in two years at a company writing instructions for a medical hardware device, financial software, a chip, or some kind of high-tech product. Working inside a company doing the job of a technical writer, you learn a lot more than we can teach you in an online course. And yes, you learn heaven-knows-what tool: SharePoint, HTML, TWiki or MediaWiki. The tools change all the time.

We hope you take our course. It improves your writing by leaps and bounds. And in today’s business environment, everybody in a company primarily experiences us from our writing, in emails.

Question:I saw your ad for a marketing writer who has done white papers, FAQs, and PowerPoint slides about switches used for data center networks. I have held a variety of technical and sales roles in networking companies. My technical background and market knowledge is very good, which I expect to be an advantage in the position you describe. I attach some examples of my writing: a published white paper and an internal sales training document from my last employer.

Answer: Indeed, the white papers you sent me demonstrate that you understand our client’s products—for which they need white papers and FAQs and PrPt slides geared to a CIO (Chief Information Officer).

Unfortunately, this job requires a professional writer who knows to include articles, hyphens, and do a couple of other things I’ll tell you about here. (We teach this writing style in an online course we offer on our Web site, www.Techwriters.com .)

Professional marketing-collateral, data-sheet writers use a couple of tricks to shorten their sentences and add punch and authority when selling a software and hardware or a new architecture. You, too, can employ these writing techniques once you learn them, shift your writing style when you write, and get a job as a marketing writer for very technical, complicated networking products.

1. Professional writers do not use the word will. They just eliminate it. Instead of This document will explain, they write This document explains. They never use the word will (future tense) and make every sentence present tense (no will, ought to, might, could, may).

2. Professional writers do a search on every instance of these words: is, are, was, were, be, been, being (passive verbs). Marketing writers at ad agencies never use these ‘killer be’s.’ They do a ‘find’ on every one of the above passive verbs and eliminate them where they have snuck in. Whenever a sentence contains one or more of the killer be’s, that sentence totally lacks any subject, or actor. So they put an actor in, such as “Network engineers all prefer a meshed or partially meshed matrix configuration,” instead of writing “Network engineers agree that a meshed matrix configuration is desirable.”

You did not send your resume with your samples, and you probably did not work as a marketing, copy writer in a marketing or tech pubs department at a high-tech company. But people can and have learned to write like the best professional writers, with practice. Unfortunately, this job requires that expertise with writing.

Question:I found your technical writing course through Google and it looks good. I have been a professional writer for a long time and have often wanted to learn technical writing and get into that field.

I look forward to trying out your course.

I was also wondering if you know where I can go to learn FrameMaker, which seems to be a requirement of many tech writing jobs.

Answer:Tech writers write in plain MS Word now, James, or plain text that goes into a content management system (CMS) or IBM's SharePoint. All company content sits in a database now and appears on a Web site that users bring up on their laptops, Blackberries, or iPhones, in plain, straightforward text-with numbered steps.

It's the WRITING that counts, not the tool. Technical writing looks and reads very differently than all other writing. It's unique: short, concise, direct, employs all active verbs, and never uses any passive verbs (is, are, was, were, be, been). Tech writers (the great ones) write in present tense only (no will, ought to, might, could, may). They break up big paragraphs of blah, blah, blah with descriptive, short headings. They do not write big paragraphs of blah, blah, blah.

You can see how great tech writers write by going into Help in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint and asking for an instruction on how to do something in any of those applications.

In 'How to Do Tech Writing' on www.Techwriters.com, we teach you to write
similarly to Microsoft's Help instructions. That's how we write user instructions now, eliminating all fancy FrameMaker styles. Writers USED to spend four hours of their day formatting in FrameMaker. No more.

We hope you take our online class in technical writing. I'll look for the sample manuals you write (after we teach you how to write like Microsoft's writers do in their Help instructions). This special technique requires lots of thinking first. All good writing requires that, and we teach you how to do that, first.

Question:Would you mind recommending a project that would be a good example of technical writing? Is there a particular software package (free, hopefully) that you think would look good? I'd appreciate any help. I've started working on a user's guide for an XML editor. This way, I can improve my XML coding skills and learn a valuable tool. Will this suffice for my second manual I submit to 'How to Do Tech Writing?'

Answer:Yes. Write about how to write XML coding.

Just remember to tell the reader (Module One):
1. Who uses the tool or this XML code, most commonly
2. What the tool or this XML code accomplishes
3. Where you use the tool or this XML code (under what circumstances)
4. When you use the tool or this XML code, to do what
5. How you use the tool or this XML code. Your numbered steps go in
these sections.
6. Why you use the tool or this XML code.

Question:I was interested in taking the online course at www.techwriters.com; however, I just wanted to make sure that I am really going to be able to make a portfolio in this class. In the last class that I took, the teacher said that I can feel free to write anything that I want for my portfolio and she would look at it. So, I just wanted to make sure, in your course, do you give clear guidelines what to write about? Meaning that even if I don't have any related experience at work, would I still know what to write about?

Answer:We’re a placement agency for technical writers, and have specialized in that business for over 20 years.

We know what clients look for in the technical writer they want to hire, and what determines whether or not someone can, in fact, perform the difficult job of technical writing: SAMPLE USER INSTRUCTIONS.

User instructions do not look like or read like any other kind of writing (except recipes in a cook book). We need more tech writers to place with clients who want them, nationwide. So we have a vested interest in teaching you how to do this very unique kind of writing, then having you do some of it, so we have more people who in fact can do it (because they have done it).

So yeah, we tell you what to write and how to write it in ‘How to do Tech Writing’ on www.Techwriters.com .

We look forward to your taking this online course and seeing your user instructions that you write, based on the 35 tech writer writing rules we teach.

Question:I ran across your Web site and am interested in taking your course.

Here's my story but before I sign up for the course, I guess I just want reassurance about the job market.

For several years I worked in Dallas at Bank of America and prior to that for Andersen Consulting. A big part of my job was documentation and technical writing.

However, my husband moved me to a very small town in southwest Oklahoma and there simply are no jobs here. What few jobs there are would be clerk positions paying $8 per hour.

If I take your course, what are the chances of me getting positions (contract or permanent) where I could telecommute from home and/or travel occasionally to an office?

Answer:You have to work on site at a software, chip, or other hardware company (the only businesses that need 1,000s of pages of documentation, four times a year for each new revision of the product). Software and hardware companies operate primarily in San Jose or other large cities. They will not use a writer who lives in Oklahoma, because the writer has to look at the product, ‘play with it,’ the companies will not give you the product to experiment with, and anyway, technical writers always run into problems trying to work the product and have to ask a developer what to do to move forward. You also need to attend meetings, to hear about changes in direction.

That’s fascinating, about the NO high tech in Oklahoma. I’m not surprised.

High-tech companies that move to, say Utah (one case I know of), eventually move back to Silicon Valley. They can’t find any programmers in Utah.

By the way, instead of becoming a technical writer, become a Java programmer. Everyone needs those, even in Oklahoma. (American children do not take math, do not know math, and we have no programmers. Only ones from India and China who move here, if we let them.)

Sorry I cannot give you a better prognosis for them hiring an off-site tech writer in Oklahoma.

Question:Are there any private companies in your region of sufficient stature and public exposure that they must have clear, crisp, technical writing—writing that conforms to the best editing authorities, such as The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, the New York Times style book, and Strunk & White?

Answer:I share your frustration over the shoddy, careless writing tolerated and accepted in user instructions.

But guess what? The latest trend in technical publishing technology will help us out in this struggle.

Increasingly, writers must write in chunks, or bricks, which now get tagged and put into XML content management systems (CMS). These publishing systems have document text definitions (DTDs). Writers MUST follow the imposed constraint of the DTD. They cannot write anything except prescribed sections: an introduction, a task procedure, and a reference section, for example. I like this. It keeps us from writing 36 pages of blah, blah, blah

Increasingly, they’re getting rid of everything but the task procedure section as they migrate content into an XML system. I love that. Readers of software and hardware documentation (except for chips) really only need to learn how to DO something. So DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) and XML labeling of content will impose straightforward, how to do it writing.

Praise the XML revolution.

Of course, we still have the problem of incorrect English and passive voice. And that problem will increase as more and more people for whom English is a second language will have to receive the baton from retiring American tech writers. We hope they will all take our online course, ‘How to Do Tech Writing’ on www.techwriters.com. It teaches them to use active verbs, articles, punctuation, commas, hyphens, and capital letters correctly, write parallel, frequent headings, and only give the reader what the reader needs.

Question: Is our course recognized nationally?

Answer: Lots of companies, nationwide, know about www.TECHwriters.com and our placement Agency, Webster Techwriters. But taking our online course does not equate to getting a degree in Technical Communications from Carnegie Mellon, for example. (They have a strong program.)

Currently, one can major in Technical Writing or obtain a Certificate in Technical Writing from a college such as San Jose State or D’Anza, a two-year college here in Silicon Valley. You no doubt can find a university or state college that offers a Technical Writing certificate near your home in Minnesota. That will take you two years of taking courses and cost you at least $5,000. No national accrediting agency recognizes an online, off-campus, Web-based course only offering one course, such as the Webster Techwriters’ course. When we had our ‘brick and mortar’ school in downtown San Francisco with another campus in Santa Clara, we did win national accreditation--from ACCET (the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training). We migrated that course curriculum into the online course we offer now for technical writers.

Question: Does this course give certification?

Answer: See above answer. However, When you complete our assignment, e-mail it to us, and receive a grade of C or above, we mail you a hard copy, lovely Certificate of Completion diploma, with an embossed seal. You can frame it and put it on your wall in your office.

Question: Do you have placement referral services in the state of Minnesota?

Answer: Yes. We get orders for technical writers from every state. Not in Minnesota yet, but in Natik, Massachusetts, where a large software Company sought our help in adding to their staff of 22 technical writers, and in Connecticut, where we have had a technical writer working on explaining robotics equipment for two years, and at a downtown New York City Publishing Company, where we placed three technical writers.

Question: Do you have clients on the West coast who allow off-site employment?

Answer: Companies only give off site, work-from-home work to very experienced technical writers who have written user instructions, online Help, Web-based Help for many high-tech companies, in long-term jobs, for ten years.

Question: I work full time as a technical writer, but want to get a qualifying course. I have a few questions regarding your course:

1) What do I get when I cover the modules - a certificate? -and what does it equal to?
2) How do I get the certificate - by post mail, or electronically?
3) How much effort I will have to put in the training, as well as for what period of time should I cover all the modules?
4) What are the options after taking the certificate to get "working from home" assignments"?

Answer:

1) What do I get when I cover the modules - a certificate? -and what does it equal to?

If you complete your writing assignment, a set of instructions for users of hi-tech equipment, you receive a certificate of completion in the mail.

2) How do I get the certificate - by post mail, or electronically?

By post mail.

3) How much effort will I have to put in the training, as well as for what period of time should I cover all the modules?

It’s up to you, how much time you spend learning the rules the best technical writers follow, practicing those rules, then writing some real instructions and submitting your assignment to us for editing. Some go through our eight modules in three weeks; some take a year.

4) What are the options after taking the certificate to get "working from home" assignments"?

Companies only give off site, work-from-home work to very experienced technical writers who have written many online Help, Web-based Help samples for many high-tech companies, and long-term jobs for ten years. To get 100% off site work, you must have many impressive PDF files of user instructions you wrote while working in Technical Publications departments at well-known software or hardware companies. Even with that experience, our clients do not like it when the technical writer demands to work off site. Such demands usually result in the client cancelling the contract early.

I remember a large Company in Silicon Valley, a client of ours, where the editor worked at home in Boston, one of the tech writers worked in L.A., and another tech writer worked in Arizona. Their customer instructions were useless. The writers had never looked at the product, self tested their instructions on the product, talked face-to-face with a developer to find out what customers had to do to install, integrate, bring up live, operate, or troubleshoot the product. Tech writers must act like reporters: get the story, get the facts, then check what they wrote by following their own instructions on the new product in a lab inside the company.

Question: Deborah wanted to know more about what our online course covers, and whether or not it teaches XML and FrameMaker.

Answer: You wanted to know more about what our course covers. Here’s a partial list:

Focus on the reader
Make a task list
Produce an outline
Write parallel headings
Use left justify only
Put text under each heading
Use numbered steps
Use bulleted lists
Eliminate all passive verbs
Use graphics
Add callouts to graphics
Use present tense only
Use commas correctly
Use capital letters correctly
Include articles
Master hyphens, parentheses
Use apostrophes correctly
Use terms consistently
The rule of 1,000 knives

In a $285. online course, we cannot teach XML or FrameMaker. Anyway, companies increasingly put all of their documents and instructions into a CMS (Content Management System). Now you have to learn (on the job) XML schemes, Epic, and DITA (Darwin information typing architecture). Did we mention that only very smart, good writers can document software? You do have to know how to edit, as per the 19 writing rules above, plus other rules we teach in our course.

To get a job as a technical writer, you need to show sample instructions. In our course, you produce those, correctly. Our editors mark up your draft, correcting your English where necessary.

Question: Keith sought some advice from us about beginning a career in Technical Writing. He said he lives in New Jersey, has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, and used to work as a sports writer. He wondered if he had a good chance to work as a technical writer with his background, and what training he needs to get started.

Answer: With a Ph.D. in Chemistry and work as a Chemist, MANY companies want you: companies who make medical equipment that analyzes cells and blood, companies that make other analytic equipment, companies that make software to help biologists compute DNA research. Also, drug companies need documentation to submit to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), documentation that recounts what happened in clinical trials for a proposed, new drug.

Some community colleges and universities offer courses and certificates in Technical Writing. Taking one such course does not guarantee that you can get a job as a tech writer, although with a Certificate in Technical Writing, a company may hire you.

Technical writers, like plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, learn their career and get better at it on the job. The more companies who have hired you to do technical writing, the more money you can charge. But with your Ph.D. in Chemistry and just one sample user guide, a company may give you a chance.

But how do you get the sample user instructions?

Take our course on www.TECHwriters.com . In it, you write a set of sample instructions. You submit the instructions to us and one of our editors gives you feedback, and shows you where you did not follow the 35 rules we teach in ‘How to Do Tech Writing,’ on www.TECHwriters.com.

Question: My background is in electronics, communications and electronic test equipment calibration in the United States Navy, and telecommunications and networking with a company in San Jose, CA. With the telecom company I installed and maintained equipment. In the process of performing upgrades, hardware and software I began to edit the upgrade instructions. As a project I took upon myself to build a web based system to link all of the instructions needed to perform various upgrades. I have no degree, but have been writing various genre for many years. My question is, what are my chances of breaking into technical writing after taking your course without a formal degree? Any of your thoughts on this would be highly appreciated.

Answer: People in companies--and in the Army, Navy, and Air Force--like to put writers on the job of writing instructions who have a B.A. in English, History, or similar major.

Here’s why.

In order to have credibility, belief, trust, the manual or online Help has to use correct English. If the instructions have tons of mistakes, they seem sloppy, careless, not professional, untrustworthy. Companies who hire you as their technical writer especially want their customers to perceive them as competent, professional, thorough, caring—a class act, so to speak.

A technical writer must write:

As a project, I took it upon myself to build a Web-based system to link all instructions for performing various upgrades.

Instead of:

As a project I took upon myself to build a web based system to link all of the instructions needed to perform various upgrades.

Or:

I have no degree, but have been writing in various genres for many years.

Instead of:

I have no degree, but have been writing various genre for many years.

Our online course, ‘How to Do Tech Writing,’ on www.techwriters.com , goes a long way in helping you learn correct subject-verb agreement, punctuation, use of commas, hyphens, correct capitalization, and 35 other writing rules the best professional writers follow. It’s not as thorough as a four-year degree in English, but it’s pretty darn good. You write a set of instructions, submit your writing to us, and we correct the English mistakes you make. That’s how you learn not to make them again.

Taking our course will improve your writing in your e-mails, job applications, reports, business letters, and anything else you write throughout the rest of your working life.

You can show the sample instructions you write in our course and maybe get a job as a technical writer. You have to show a sample in order to obtain such a job.

We look forward to your taking our course and giving you professional feedback on your English writing from one of our editors.

Question: I wanted to know how valid my credentials would be in industry's view if I were to do well in your course.

Question: I am looking for a serious tech writing course that includes exact info as to the education, experience and credentials of those that interact with me in an instructional role. Ideally, some academic qualifications, and some real work experience.

Answer: One $285. online technical writing how-to course cannot substitute for a two-year course of study on campus, with a variety of professors lecturing you in twenty different courses you take while getting your certificate in Technical Writing. In addition to the two years, such an on-campus program will cost you at least $5,000.

The very finest, top-tier technical writers in Silicon Valley designed our course: 35 writing rules the best technical writers follow.

Academic qualifications, such as Ph.Ds in English, don't mean that professors on a campus know ANYTHING about what high-tech companies want to see in your sample user instructions, nor do they know that only with sample user instructions can you get a job as a working technical writer.

In many technical writing certification programs they don't even have you write one manual during the two years. They have you writing reports, or newsletters as part of a team of four students. They just don't know what high-tech employers want and need. How could they? They have spent their lives on campus.

Our course designers and editors have Master's degrees in English, most of them. But mainly, they know the writing style that works for user instructions (from their 15 or more years of experience working as technical writers in high-tech companies).

We designed an asynchronous, as opposed to synchronous online course. In an asynchronous course (ours), you do not interact, live, with a teacher. You go through the writing rules one by one, learn them, practice them, then apply them to writing real user instructions.

In a synchronous course, you log on at a certain time and hear a teacher speak, see a teacher demonstrate things. We did not design a synchronous course.

Question: I have a degree in Chemical engineering and do not work currently. I have a 'dependent' Visa.

•	Do I qualify to take this course?
•	Is the certificate offered by your institution recognized globally, like in India?
•	Would you help me with placement and job searching?
•	Since I would be new to this field, how far would it help me in starting a new career?

Answer: Yes, you qualify to take our online course, 'How to Do Tech Writing.' In fact, we noticed some grammar and spelling errors in your writing of English. Our editors will point out all of your English writing mistakes and tell you how to correct them.

We only offer a certificate of completion. That's different from 'certification.' Many American universities offer two-year courses of study they call 'Certificate in Technical Writing.' We're a private company, a placement agency. Not a university.

In our course, you write two user instructions teaching how to use a cell phone (the new computer). Our editors point out any mistakes you make in your sample user instructions after you turn them in to us. You can then clean them up and have a sparkling writing sample to show. That's how you get a job as a technical writer, by showing a good sample instruction manual.

Question:I have an undergrad degree in Community Psychology, have experience in proposal writing, and am looking at getting a certificate in Technical Writing. Can you tell me if your agency would hire someone with this type of background? And if there is a specific type of certificate program you see is adequate? Thanks so much.

Answer:The companies who hire the largest numbers of technical writers, for the longest durations, make hardware and software products. These companies need software and hardware online help. They cannot hire an ‘unknown,’. They must see that you know how to write a user guide, with numbered steps.

That’s why we offer our online course, ‘How to Do Tech Writing.’ If you take it and do the homework, you actually write real user instructions, a very, very different type of writing. Our editors give you corrections to make, to make your portfolio of user instructions more impressive (and desirable) to a prospective employer.

If you learn the writing rules we teach in our online course, ‘How to Do Tech Writing,’ and follow those rules when you write your sample, we can then recommend you to an employer in your area and tell him or her that you do, in fact, know how to write a good user guide, and have the sample to prove it!

If you decide to spend the tuition and the two years to enroll in and complete a certificate program, make sure you understand how many real user instructions they guide you to write, and if you write user instructions about software or hardware or medical devices before you complete the two-year program.

In tech writing, it’s all about your sample user guide that you yourself wrote.