Effective Technical Writing in the Information Age

For students and others who read it, this style manual quickly becomes a favorite resource. Whether planning a paper, running a grammar check, completing a report, composing an email, puzzling over a usage or grammar issue, or writing a resume or online portfolio, you are bound to find the material and examples you need in Style for Students Online.  Drawing from his breadth of experience as a tutor, teacher, editor, and creative writer, Joe Schall provides technical writing advice that spans from the conceptual to the niggling.  Thoughtful, practical, up-to-date, and rich in pith, Style for Students Online should be bookmarked as one of your oft-visited websites.

About the Author

Joe Schall was the Giles Writer-in-Residence for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State from 1988 until 2008. He received an M.A. in English from Penn State in 1988 and a B.S. in English Education from Juniata College in 1981. He has won numerous honors for his writing and teaching, including the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers from New York University and the Wilson Award for Outstanding Teaching from Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. His publications range from short stories to style guides (Writing Recommendation Letters Online [1] and Writing Personal Statements Online [2]). He has published articles about writing in a wide variety of magazines, including Graduating Engineer and Computer Careers, Writers' Forum, and Academe. By invitation, he has previously taught writing workshops on the subjects of his style guides at over 20 schools, including Pepperdine University, MIT, Roanoke College, Messiah University, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Joe Schall is currently a Health Communications Specialist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Features of this Manual

• Internal search engine.
• Printer-friendly chapters and pages.
• "Self-Study" links to additional resources and recommended websites.
• Sample documents available as PDFs or in-text.

Permission to Use Material from this Manual

This manual is available for free use by students, faculty, and other interested parties, and the intention is to make this material as widely available as possible. For those interested in obtaining permission to use any material herein, the rules are spelled out by the Creative Commons license, available by clicking here [3].

Comments on this Manual

Comments on this manual are welcomed and can be directed to the author at schall@ems.psu.edu [4].

As the above quote from Bill Gates demonstrates, things change. On the year that Gates made that now ironic statement, I graduated from college, having handwritten many of my college papers and awkwardly typed the others, using Elmer’s Glue to repair the occasionally wayward letters on my manual Smith Corona. I clearly recall conversations with a college friend, a computer science major, and the banter was always the same: He warned me that computer literacy would one day be essential to the writer, while I urged him to abandon his hope that he would never write another essay after college. Turns out, we were both correct: I now compose at the keyboard and devote most of my days to electronic communication, while my college pal has published dozens of essays and a textbook.

But what price, this change? In a student’s paper, I once ran across a curious misspelling of a technical term common to his field, and when I questioned him about it he innocently replied: "I tried spelling it the way it is in the literature, but my grammar checker didn’t like it.” Too many students forget the value and delight of chasing down an answer between the covers of a book, and they enter college vowing never to set foot in any library outside the walls of the web. The possible consequences are not a mere shift from paper cuts to carpal tunnel—they impact the way we perceive research, perform writing, and measure quality. Clearly, we cannot shove the print medium aside nor assume that computers should do our thinking for us. Rather, as writers, we must grow with the times.

This new electronic edition of Style for Students Online is designed to help you achieve such growth. Having tutored students in technical writing for over 20 years, I’ve found that students crave clear, direct explanations and variegated examples; they respect lessons that are systematized and like to model or improve upon positive examples from their peers; they need to embrace technology without abandoning fundamental principles of learning. This online handbook champions those principles, all of which I co-learned alongside my best students, who were reflective enough to realize that writing impacts their lives well beyond the classroom. For receptive students, writing broadens their outlook, builds their confidence, demonstrates their acumen, and enriches their professional cache. In short, writing changes them, as it has me. And now, with the information age permeating every cranny of our lives, we must learn to channel the ways that writing changes us through the virtual world, and vice versa. No matter how we come to writing, we are all one community of online learners.

Previous editions of this manual enjoyed several generations and various publishers, but upon leaving academia for another career I decided to make the manual available online for free through Penn State’s forward-thinking John A. Dutton e-Education Institute. For me, the online version of the manual is especially appealing because it helps me reach a greater number of students and allows for easy updates and revisions. Also, readers can search for a lesson in the manual just by typing keywords into the "Search” box, and with most lessons I provide "Self-Study” boxes linking readers to recommended and related pages at the click of a mouse. As an online text, Style for Students Online is a work in progress, so comments and suggestions are always welcome. Feel free to contact me directly with comments at schall@ems.psu.edu [5].

—Joe Schall, September 2016

This manual would not have been possible without the encouragement of my best students and teachers, stretching back 40 years to my favorite high school English teacher, Stephanie Hollick. Early versions of this manual were actively supported by Dean John Cahir and Dean John Dutton, whose steadfast mentorship led me into a rewarding 20-year career in Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Many students I worked with during this career inspired me with their academic successes, life ambitions, diverse talents, and warm senses of humor. Some of those same students voluntarily supplied me with the original documents that serve as examples within this manual, and though I do not honor the students specifically by name here I do have their names written down at home, and I recall all of them fondly.

This electronic edition of my style manual would not have been possible without the creative support team at Penn State's John A. Dutton e-Education Institute and the Institute's Repository of Open and Affordable Materials (ROAM) [6]. I owe particular thanks to Jennifer Babb, Instructional Design Assistant, who laid out the book in Drupal [7] and taught me the basics of using the software, guiding me patiently through the process and always with a watchful eye for continuity, form, utility, and professionalism. Eric Spielvogel, Multimedia Specialist, designed the artful interface for the manual, even finding creative ways to integrate the look of the previous print edition. These individuals, along with others who are part of the OER Initiative and collaborated on this project, came along in my life at just the right time. I had speculated about making this book available for free online for years, and I just needed the right support team.

Finally, I am indebted most to Professor William Hofelt, Juniata College, whose sensibility and sensitivity have always guided my adult life. As with previous versions of this book, this new edition is dedicated to Bill, my best teacher.