I recommend the following books and online pages for help with technical writing. I provide a brief comment after each entry to highlight its strong points. Entries in each category are more or less in order of usefulness, web links first, books last.

Technical writing

• The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing
  recommenced; concise guide to technical writing from MIT authors, L. C. Perelman, J. Paradis, and E. Barrett; concise explanation of all aspects of technical writing; available in printed form, but perhaps most useful is this free online hypertext version
• Handbook of Technical Writing, G. J. Alred, W. E. Oliu and C. T. Brusaw (Bedford/St. Martin's, New York, 2018, 10th edition)
  highly recommenced; complete guide to technical writing and other forms of professional communication; includes succinct summary of the writing process; informative entries arranged in alphabetical order; excellent index
• Grammar, Punctuation, and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors (1990)
  NASA report that summarizes the rules relevant to technical writing
• AIP Style Manual with searchable text (1997)
  American Institute of Physics provides this helpful guide, which has useful advice about technical writing in the physical sciences
• How to Write a Good Scientific Paper, Chris A. Mack (SPIE, 2018)
  A concise SPIE pamphlet with useful guidance that is available as a free ebook.
• MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication, J. G. Paradis and M. L. Zimmerman (MIT, Cambridge, 2002)
  treats all means of technical communication; includes a useful brief handbook of style and usage
• An Outline of Scientific Writing: For Researchers With English As a Foreign Language, J. T. Yang (World Scientific, 1995)
  may be especially useful for ESL writers
• Guide to Technical Editing: Discussion, Dictionary, and Exercises, Anne Eisenberg (Oxford University, New York, 1992)
  useful guide to technical editing
• SciWrite: Writing in the Sciences
  Upper-level online course offered by Stanford University and taught by Kristin Sainani. Especially helpful for its class room-style demonstration of the revision process. After registering, you may watch whatever sessions with which you feel you need help.

English writing

• Online Writing Lab (Purdue OWL)
  Purdue University guide to effective writing at college level; grammar and punctuation with exercises; English as a Second Language (ESL)
• Bartleby Classic Online Books (http://www.bartleby.com/ )
  has a wonderful collection of venerable writers' aids: the American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, quotations, and more:
  • Elements of Style, classic handbook, written by William Strunk in 1918
  • King's English, by H. W. Fowler (1908), well-known writers' guidelines
• Politics and the English Language, George Orwell (1946)
  highly-regarded concise essay on basic rules for clear writing. Alternative link
• Guide to Grammar and Style
  useful online guide to many grammatical rules and aspects of style; J. Lynch (Rutgers)
• Writing Center , Grammar-Monster , Online Writing Center
  several online aids for English writing, grammar, and writing academic papers
• Elements of Style, W. Strunk Jr. and E. B. White (Allyn & Bacon, 1995)
  highly recommended short book giving the basic rules for writing; updated in 1957 by White, it is more complete than the online classic, written by Strunk in 1918
• Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting, William A. Sabin (McGraw-Hill, 2010)
  very complete and easy to use manual on English grammar and usage
• Rules for Writing, Diana Hacker, (Bedford/St. Martins, Boston, 2011, seventh edition)
  excellent compact reference book and textbook on writing at the college level.
• Writing: A College Handbook, J. Atwill, J. A. W. Heffernan and J. E. Lincoln (W. W. Norton, 2000)
  excellent textbook on writing at the college level
• Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers, M. G. Kramer et al. (Prentice Hall, 1994)
  comprehensive and concise classic reference

Dictionaries and Thesauruses

• American Heritage Dictionary, an excellent dictionary with pronunciation sound clip
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
  usable, gives etymology and pronunciation sound clips
• Wordsmyth Dictionary and Thesaurus
  very usable, although definitions are brief; identifies parts of speech
• Synonym Finder (Rodale, 1978)
  a thesaurus in dictionary form; very easy to use

Articles on technical writing

I recommend the following articles on technical writing (reproduced by permission). I provide a list of keywords for each. More recent issues of IEEE Transactions on Professional Commmunication are listed at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47.

• "Creative obfuscation," J. Scott Armstrong, IEEE Trans. on Profess. Comm. PC-25, pp. 30-32 (1982)(pdf, 750 KB): technical writing, communication, communication for knowledge, fog index, clarity, obfuscation, unintelligibilty, journal reviewer
• "Ten Rules for Writing Readably," Arn Tibbetts, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-25, 10-13 (1982)(pdf, 1225 KB): English writing, readability, style, clarity, sentence structure, premise, subordinate clause, parallel structure, surprise
• "How well do you inform?," Thomas P. Johnson, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-25, 5-9 (1982)(pdf, 1608 KB): technical writing, communication, handling details, handling ideas, concrete nouns, active verbs, tests
• "Brainstorming: in search of an idea," Richard A. Taylor, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-25, 38-40 (1982)(pdf, 784 KB): brainstorming, green lighting, synergy, recording ideas, free expression, overcoming lulls, stimulating ideas

• "The use of repetition in technical communication," Muriel Zimmerman, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-25, 9-10 (1983)(pdf, 607 KB): technical writing, communication, clarity, repetition, repeating key points, redundancy
• "How to write with style," Kurt Vonnegut, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-24, 66-67 (1981)(pdf, 605 KB): technical writing, style, simplicity, conciseness, be yourself, say what you mean, value reader
• "To publish or not to publish," Richard A. Conway, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-26, 17-19 (1983)(pdf, 670 KB): technical publication, publish or perish, decision to publish, validation, trade information, patent concern, compensation, legal review
• "Proposal writing: approaching the approach," Jeffrey M. Seisler, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-26, 58-60 (1983)(pdf, 702 KB): proposal writing, approach, rigor, request for proposal, RFP, contractor perspective, purpose, activities, output, anticipated problems, schedule
• "Proposals: write to win," Clark E. Beck, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-26, 56-57 (1983)(pdf, 564 KB): winning proposal, request for proposal, RFP, organization, approach, technical evaluation, descriptive writing

Article on conference organization

• "Planning and organizing an annual conference," Janet H. Potvin, IEEE Trans. Profess. Comm. PC-26, 123-152 (1983)(pdf, 8061 KB), [first two pages only] : conference planning, registration, organization, schedule, steps, officers, committees, hotel, site, planning decisions, contingencies, post-conference, publication, proceedings

Slides from my course on Technical Writing for Publication

• "Writing for publication," K. M. Hanson, full set of slides from a short course presented at SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium, Houston, Texas, February 10, 2018 (abstract), slides (pdf, 3327 KB, 175 slides)

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