Technical Communication for College and Career: How to Write in Academia, Business, Engineering, Research, Science, and Technology

This original and comprehensive guide to technical communication for college and career is organized into five major parts covering these essentials: delivering just the right document, writing elegant prose, fulfilling your communication purpose, persuading your reader, and mastering important genres. In addition, five appendices cover equally valuable topics: common composition mistakes; resumes job cover letters, and thank-you notes; formatting essentials; conference posters; and oral presentations and projection slides. With examples of letters, memoranda, white papers, and articles, along with numerous samples of graphs, tables, presentation slides, resumes, and posters, the author explains—in a cheerful and sometimes cheeky style—how to write technical documents and design visual elements. Review grammar and punctuation, brush up on paragraph or sentence structure, double check easily confused words, or learn how to write an important technical document from start to finish.

Jack Fishstrom has over 30 years’ experience writing, editing, and presenting technical reports on a wide range of topics within academia, business, engineering, research, science, and technology. His work also includes legal analysis and litigation support. He has been teaching technical writing to engineering students at the University of Michigan since 1993. He also teaches public speaking and poster design. Jack has a background in video and film production as well, and he wrote and directed a feature film, Voices. In addition to four fictional screenplays and several educational video scripts, his writing portfolio includes hundreds of non-fiction items, such as proposals, environmental impact statements, public outreach materials, remedial designs, style guides, legal testimony, newsletters, magazines, software documentation, and several published journal articles. In addition to his university teaching, he is a licensed attorney, small-business owner, and consultant to engineering, legal, and medical organizations. He earned a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, magna cum laude. He holds an MA in Telecommunication Arts from the University of Michigan, and a JD from the University of Toledo, cum laude. In his free time, he meditates, gardens, exercises, reads, cooks, travels, and does absolutely nothing, as often as possible.