Technical writing course!

It was brought up in my 12 month review that I shouldn't really be writing PhD reports in the same style as my blog! Those weren't the exact words used, but I knew what they meant.

Sunny day for a flight...

I have never been a particularly technical writer, and I really struggle with trying to be clever on paper. I can talk the talk, but I can't write it down. So I attended a technical writing course that Cranfield put on. The trainer was Dr David Cooke, and he made the whole thing very interesting. Well he had to, to compete with the views of the airfield, and the aeroplanes coming in and taking off!

Try not to over complicate.

It was a two day course and the first day consisted of a lot of grammar and spelling talks and activities. It was really informative, although it should have all been information I already knew! But mainly when writing I leave the grammar to Old Pa, as I know he loves to edit my work for me and I wouldn't want to ruin his fun.  David also spoke a lot about clarity, over complicating, and trying to sound clever. He gave us lists of phrases that can be replaced by single words, but I think I might use this list in the opposite way when I can't reach a word count.
At the end of the first day we were given a sheet with some examples of all of the different things we had covered in the day, and some of them were rather funny so I have included them on here.

Maybe rephrase this, we want to make sure it is the baby we're boiling, not the milk!

Day two was a lot more about review, report and paper writing, and David equipped us with a whole folder on how to make sure we get published. Well, that is how I see it, I just need to bring my actual science up to the level of David's writing advice, and maybe one day I will be published. Maybe.

Apparently this was real, but I don't think even David believed that this could have got past even the laziest editor

I hope Dr David Cooke never actually sees any of my writing, as I wouldn't want to make him doubt his expertise as a trainer!