Mitacs Step: Build Your Scientific and Technical Writing Skills - Vancouver (Nov 22 - Nov 23, 2012)
When: Thursday, November 22 – Friday, November 23, 2012
Time: Nov 22 - 9:00am - 4:00pm (Registration 8:30am SHARP)
Nov 23 - 9:00am - 4:00pm
Where: UBC Robson Square / 800 Robson Street / Vancouver, BC
Room: C225
Make an impact with your scientific and technical writing skills! Aimed at those with scientific and technical backgrounds, join Mitacs Step for this two-day, hands-on writing workshop! From structure and grammar, to impact – get on-site expert feedback and a chance to work on a current, future, or past piece of your writing and get exposure to many samples of writing, from outstanding to atrocious. We look forward to seeing you there!
Learning Outcomes
Day 1 - Overview of the Writing Process
The first session of the writing workshop will discuss issues related to the overall writing process:
- Common pitfalls, dealing with procrastination, staying motivated;
- The importance of the writing process (inventing, drafting, editing, and revising);
- Audience analysis, understanding purpose, tone, and genres;
- Effectively organizing documents and using standard forms (i.e., theses, journal papers, poster presentation, other reports);
- Persuasive and informative writing;
- Aspects of technical reports (i.e., abstracts, introductions, results, and conclusions).
Day 2 - Revising Strategies
The second session of the writing workshop will focus on effective editing techniques and incorporating graphics into technical writing:
- Principles of punctuation;
- Revising sentences for order (sentence structure, ordering ideas);
- Revising sentences for clarity (avoiding general language, vague this subjects, noun strings, and prepositional phrases);
- Revising sentences for conciseness (importance of descriptive verbs, avoiding empty sentence openers);
- Revising for connection (structuring paragraphs, transitions between sentences);
- Effective use of graphics (appropriate types of graphs, proper use of colour and layout, incorporating graphics into text).
- Each other, to experience the development of a strong team, and to develop a model of the culture that they will want to create in their projects.