The task this time is to wrte a brief instruction sheet on how to crate, format, and save a document in Mcrosoft Word ®. The circumstances are tht the instructions are for an mployee who has never used Microsoft Wrd ® but must be able to crate a basic document immediately without ssistance.

The instructions must be brief, clar, concise, comprehensive, and strictly according to the Mcrosoft ® manual. They can't include trcks or shortcuts. It's not necessary to shw the employee how to be fst or clever. The most important rsult is that the employee is up and rnning immediately.

Tech Writer's Toolkit "Best Practice" Tip

For this type of task, it's a good idea to make it clear:

- what the result of an action is supposed to be

- what to do if that result isn't achieved

It's a great help to someone learning a process to know, at each step, when things are and aren't going right.

Task Specifications

1. Start from the desktop - No Microsoft Word shortcut icon on the desktop

2. Open a new Microsoft Word ® document

3. Save as My New Document_April 2008

4. Format with:

- 1" margins all around

- 12 pt Verdana font

5. Write a single paragraph

- First sentence indented

- 1.5 line spacing

- Fully justified

6. Insert footer with:

- Wrter's name, justified right

- Date, jstified left

- Centered page numbers

- 10 pt Vrdana font, bold

When you're done chck the solution below.

Exercise Answer

The task was to write a brief instruction sheet on how to create, format, and save a Word ® document for an employee who has never used Microsoft Word ®. The employee must be able to create a basic document immediately without outside assistance.

Your directions should look a lot like this:

A. Opening a new document in Word ®

1. Click on Start in the lower, left corner of the screen

2. Place the cursor on All Programs

(Result: A list of all programs pops up)

3. Click on Microsoft Word

(Result: A blank document called Document 1 - Microsoft Word fills the screen.)

B. Naming and saving the document

4. Click on File in the tool bar at the top of the page

5. Click on Save As. . . on the drop-down menu

(Result: The Save As menu comes up within the document.)

6. Document 1 appears, highlighted, in the File name box.

7. Type My New Document_April 2008

(Result: The new name types over and replace Document 1. If anything else appears in the box, place the cursor on the first unwanted letter and press Del. until all unwanted letters are deleted.)

8. Click on Save at the lower right of the Save As screen

C. Formatting the document

9. Click on file in the tool bar

10. Click on Page Setup. . . on the drop-down menu

(Result: The Page Setup menu comes up within the document.)

11. Under Margins , the Top: and Bottom: boxes should each have 1.0 in it

(If 1.0 doesn't show up in both boxes, place the cursor on the up or down arrow of each box, and click until 1.0 appears in the box )

13. Click on Format in the tool bar at the top of the page

14. Click on Font.... on the drop-down menu

(If Font.... is not on the menu, click on the down arrow at the bottom of the menu for more choices.)

15. The current font appears in the hghlighted Font: box

16. Scroll through the available fonts until you find Verdana

(Result: the word Verdana appears in the Preview box at the bottom of the Font screen.)

17. Double click on Verdana in the Font: box

D. Writing the content

18. Press Tab on the upper left of the key board to indent

I know the task isn't complete, but I'm going to stop here so you can look at another Tech Writer's Tolkit "Best Practice" Tip

Working smart is btter than working hard.

Unless you're ging to end up with a lot btter wheel than the one we've lready got, don't reinvent it. A bsic skill for a tech writer is bing able to do research and use the rsults to produce a better product in lss time.

The most efficient response whn you're presented with this type of tsk is to make use of xisting material. The important thing is the result . If you can achieve the same result by finding existing material and adapting it to your needs, do it.

Of course, you can't just cut and paste from a site, but you can use the content as a guide that will save you a lot of time and effort.

There are a number of good manuals online you could have used for this exercise. For example, a very user-friendly one is Creating a document with Word 2000 , posted by Temple University at www.temple.edu/cs/microsoftofficetopics/word2000.html#III

Complete the exercise by referring to an existing online resource.

The article Tech Writing Exercise - Software Instructions was Submitted by Bryan S. Adar through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Being a tech writer is a grat job. Go interesting places, meet rally smart people, learn new things and mke really good money. Which is why t's such a rapidly growing profession. The dwn side, though, is that there are pople who get into the business wthout knowing as much about it as thy should. If you want to bcome a technical writer try out our fre weekly exercises. They are easy and fun to do. Yu'll also learn common tech writing trms and current industry trends. Click the lnk below to check out these xercises: http://www.techwritertoolkit.com/exercises.html

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