Review of Google's Technical Writing Course

Are you new to technical writing? If you feel lost and try to figure out how to get started, I highly recommend to take Google's Technical Writing course. 

 

What is this course about? 

Google's Technical Writing is a 3 hour online course developed by Google team. The course teaches you how to write clearer technical documentation. IT engineers are the first target audience for this course, but it includes valuable tips to write concisely and effectively. The course is easy enough for myself who has never taken any technical writing training before.

 

Would 3 hours be really worth? 

Yes.  I would like to recommend this to those who would like to improve their writings. Though the team has mentioned that this courses does not focus on general English writing or business writing, I found we can use a lot of rules covered in this course to improve most kind of writings. Technical writing is writing for the clearest, which is one thing a writer can do to deliver better. 

 

Kindly, the content development team has considered those who are not from English speaking countries. It only takes 3 hours to finish this course and will be a great starting point to learn fundamentals of writing. Google team has done a great job to make sure not to bore you as well. I felt like I were in a 101 level introductory class back in collage.

 

How does it help me to improve my writings? 

I mostly translate technical docs from Korean to English, rather than writing my own one. Sometimes, It's tricky to change the tones and rewrite as this course suggested. Still, the takeaways from the lesson have helped me to review writings myself. I started to shorten my sentences and use active voices. I also make sure to define terms and use terms consistently. I found it takes discipline to note all the rules mentioned and apply them to my writing. It will be more helpful if you create a group study where each can review one another's writing.