Every software engineer is also a writer. Improve your technical writing skills by taking one of Google's free technical writing courses. We've aimed these courses at people in the following roles:
- professional software engineers
- computer science students
- engineering-adjacent roles, such as product managers
The courses are free, fun, and valuable to your career. Thousands of Google software engineers have taken and loved these courses. Note that these courses focus on technical writing, not on general English writing or business writing.
You need at least a little writing proficiency in English, but you don't need to be a strong writer to take these courses. You will find these courses easier to understand if you have at least a little background in coding, though you don't need to be an expert coder.
Technical Writing One and Technical Writing Two
We generally offer the following courses a few times per year:
- Technical Writing One, which covers the critical basics of technical writing.
- Technical Writing Two, which covers intermediate topics in technical writing.
Both of the preceding courses consist of the following two parts:
- Self-paced online pre-class material
- Virtual live session
Though not a requirement, we strongly recommend studying the self-paced online pre-class material prior to attending a virtual live session. Click one of the following links to access the self-paced online pre-class material:
Technical Writing for Accessibility
We occasionally also offer the following course:
- Technical Writing for Accessibility, which covers how to make your documents more accessible to everyone.
Technical Writing for Accessibility does not provide any pre-class material, so just show up and enjoy the class. That said, we do offer a self-study version of Technical Writing for Accessibility as an alternative to the instructor-led class. The self-study and instructor-led versions of this class cover very similar material.
Requirements to attend a virtual live session
To attend a virtual live session, you need to join the class using a Google Account with access to Google Meet and Google Docs.
Audio
If the class audio is hard to understand, you can turn captions on in Google Meet.
Facilitators
Some of the public courses listed in the "Schedule" section are facilitated by people who don't work for Google. We are very grateful to these volunteers! As these volunteers are not Google employees, Google can't accept any responsibility for false or misleading statements made during these public classes.
Thank you to all the facilitators who led technical writing classes and to all of our wonderful students.
Schedule
We don't offer a way to preregister for virtual live sessions. To attend a virtual live session, consult the following table and click the appropriate Google Meet link at the specified time.
| Course | Date | PT | ET | UTC | Google Meet link | Facilitator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Writing One | Thu. Oct. 24, 2024 | 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM | 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM | 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM | Google Meet | Kevin A. McGrail |
| Technical Writing Two | Fri. Nov. 15, 2024 | 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM | 12:30 PM - 3:00 PM | 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM | Google Meet | Alena Stashkova |
| Technical Writing for Accessibility | Thu. Nov. 21, 2024 | 10:00 AM - 11:30 PM | 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM | 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM | Google Meet | Darcy Lima |
- PT: United States Pacific Time
- ET: United States Eastern Time
- UTC: Coordinated Universal Time
If you don't live in one of the preceding time zones, consider entering the phrase my time zone in UTC into a search engine.
Train the Trainer
A Train the Trainer session helps prepare you to teach Technical Writing One or Technical Writing Two. During a Train the Trainer session, an experienced trainer will explain how to teach a course and will answer any of your questions.
The next Train the Trainer session will run in early 2025.