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Tag Archives: Filling in the Blanks

On Getting It Right: How to Write a Grant Application

Tweet I’ve been investigating document types for a while now, and this week I’ve been talking about grant writing — the common name used for writing grant applications. It’s enough of a complicated process that it does have its own name (albeit a slightly confusing one). It’s not that writing grant applications is puzzling. Virtually […]

On Getting It Right: Grant Applications

Tweet Yesterday I told a story about my little girl learning to read. She hasn’t got the patience to read a whole block of text yet, though. She’ll start at the beginning, and if she doesn’t recognize the first word, she says, “I can’t read this page!” And that’s it. She pushes the book away […]

On Document Templates: The Wall that Made Me Sad

I made a fake image in Photoshop–my fantasy world map hanging above the mantle in a fancy frame–and it reveals a surprising amount about document templates.

The Shape of a Document

Last fall I taught my first college-level writing course — Technical Writing at Oklahoma Christian University (my alma mater). My class consisted of a bunch of computer science and information technologies students, and a handful of English majors. It was an interesting mix.

I wasn’t out to teach them how to do my job. I did ask, first day of class, how many of them had considered becoming a Technical Writer after graduation. The answer (quite predictably) was none. When I got around to asking what they were planning on doing, every one of them named a profession that would require some proficiency with technical writing, even if it wasn’t their main job description.

Building with Words

Tweet My two-year-old daughter got a set of building blocks for Christmas, and that got me thinking about how to make you a better writer. No, really. One of her favorite games for a long time now has been “stack and smash.” She started doing it with empty thread spools, putting two or three together […]

Filling in the Blanks

Tweet Between my About page, my introductory article, and just the name of the website, I’ve already made a lot of big promises. Turning Technical Writing into a simple, stress-free task is no small feat, but we’re going to get started right now. While reading that introductory material, you may have noticed that I referred […]