MANUAL FOR TECHNICAL
WRITING ON THE WEB
Introduction
Welcome to this site. My English 303-04 class and I have prepared it to
make it easier for you to prepare Technical Writing documents to put on
the World Wide Web for my English 303 course. This site is still being
constructed, so if you have any questions or suggestions, please
contact me so that we can improve the manual. We want it to be as user-friendly
as possible. While the first section of this manual is directed specifically
toward Louisiana Tech University students, the rest of the manual should
apply to anybody wanting to write technically on the Web.
I divide my classes into groups and require each group to design and
post a project on the World Wide Web. In addition, I encourage individual
students to post their long papers and resumes on the Web.
Technical Writing Links
Where do you go to get a computer account at Louisiana Tech University?
Where do you go to use your account? Where will they let you in? Where
will they kick you out? How do you get software for your computer? How
do you download? Upload? If you don't know these things, stop here lest
you become roadkill on the information highway.
This section of the manual will help you do research on the World Wide
Web. It has links to directories and search engines. Some of these tools
are general; others are specialized. Although there are differences in
the ways individual tools work, they usually allow you to type in words
relating to your subject. They then look up those terms and give you a
list of documents with those words. You can then read the ones that look
most promising.
The documents you produce for the WWW are in HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
form. The purpose of this section is to guide you to locations that will
help you understand HTML and use it in the creation of your documents.
This section is more specific to doing Technical Writing on the WWW. It
will provide you with links to other sites that deal with this subject.