Source repository for the Tools and Technology for Technical Writers course at Middlesex Community College
This branch (Winter2025) is for the Winter Class running from January 23, 2025 - May 8, 2025.
Over the years, technical writing has become much more technical. To be a tech writer, you not only need to be able to put English together in a comprehensible way, you also need to be able to do it in a format usable by your publishing technologies. You may need to integrate your content with different software applications to make it context sensitive. You may need to index, tag, or otherwise write your content to be searchable. You may need to make your content meet accessibility requirements. How you design your information must be influenced by your tools. You need to find the balance between what serves your audience best and what is actually maintainable and deliverable by you and your tools.
This class is not comprehensive. There are dozens of tools out there, and more are being invented every day. We will touch on some standards, some types of tools, and introduce you to a couple of them. At most, we will be spending two weeks on any tool. The hope is that you will become aware of what tools can do, and why you would want to pick one tool over another for a particular project, and where you can go to learn how to use the tools you pick.
For more information, see https://www.middlesex.edu/community/business.html.