This original and comprehensive guide to technical communication for college and career is organized into five major parts covering these essentials: delivering just the right document, writing elegant prose, fulfilling your communication purpose, persuading your reader, and mastering important genres. In addition, five appendices cover equally valuable topics: common composition mistakes; resumes job cover letters, and thank-you notes; formatting essentials; conference posters; and oral presentations and projection slides. With examples of letters, memoranda, white papers, and articles, along with numerous samples of graphs, tables, presentation slides, resumes, and posters, the author explains -- in a cheerful and sometimes cheeky style -- how to write technical documents and design visual elements. Review grammar and punctuation, brush up on paragraph or sentence structure, double check easily confused words, or learn how to write an important technical document from start to finish.