Heroic Technical Writing: Advice and Insights on the Business of Technical Communication

Following my presentation last week, an engineer friend pointed out that the biggest adjustment he faced with technical writing was learning to write proposals. For reasons that elude me, unless they’re required to take a technical writing class, college/university engineering students often do not get any education in the art of proposal writing. Science majors learn grant writing early on, perhaps because scientific studies are heavily grant driven, and so grant proposals are built into the curriculum. Engineering is often detached from “mere marketing.” That doesn’t mean engineers are immune from that sort of work. Today I’ll share some thoughts to help engineers unfamiliar with the mysteries of writing proposals. Continue reading →