Webinar Duration: 60 minutes

RECORDED: Access recorded version only for one participant; unlimited viewing for 6 months (Access information will be emailed 24 hours after the completion of payment)

SPEAKER: Hope J. Lafferty

OVERVIEW:
Modeled after David Letterman’s Top 10 List, this session outlines best practices in contemporary pharmaceutical writing. After counting down each mistake, useful and immediately applicable solutions help audiences view their own writing in new ways.

To equip pharmaceutical consultants and technical writers with the most contemporary practices in pharmaceutical writing, the program outlines:

– The importance of word choice to break the monotony of repetition and make the content more compelling
– Contemporary term usage, to shift away from using the shorthand, jargon, and antiquated terms that scientists and engineers use to quickly communicate in less structured types of writing
– How best to convey one’s argument by simply understanding and modifying how sentences are structured
– How and why to write with the audience in mind, especially in a world where our documents reach a global audience at many stages of their careers
– Various ways to demystify and approach the writing process, by knowing how to prepare, where to start, and when to revise
– By outlining common mistakes and identifying simple solutions, pharmaceutical consultants and technical writers will have tools to improve their ability to write, edit, and organize their documents, with the goal of transforming average writers into excellent writers.

Why should you attend: Technical writers set themselves apart by the excellence of their writing. However, the complexity of the material might make their writing difficult to understand. The difference between excellent writers and average writers lies in their ability to assume the perspective of their audience. Seeing their writing from the viewpoint of the audience elucidates sections that need clarification, revision, or restructuring.

For many pharmaceutical consultants, the writing style that they adopted to complete their education and training might now seem outdated and tedious to read. Learning modern and standard writing skills help consultants remain competitive.

Pharmaceutical consultants and technical writers might receive feedback on the content of the documents they write, but rarely on the writing itself. The results of inadequate or poor writing are routinely seen when:
– Instructions fail to be implemented correctly
– Submissions do not receive reviewer approval
– Processes remain unadopted despite myriad SOPs
– Documents languish in the project queue
– Unfinished projects force delays or cause missed deadlines
– By recognizing common writing mistakes, pharmaceutical consultants and tech writers will learn how to improve their writing, increase their productivity, and stay within project timelines.

Areas Covered in the Session:
– Contemporary Usage & Word Choice
– Sentence Structure
– The Writing Process

Who Will Benefit:
– Phds Hired for R&D (Biochemistry, Microbiology, Biophysics)
– Science Phds Hired as Medical Writers
– Lab Personnel (Materials Scientists, Medical Scientists, Chemists)
– Bioprocess Engineers
– Chemical Engineers
– Validation Consultants
– Training and Development Personnel

SPEAKER PROFILE:
Hope J. Lafferty, AM, ELS As a board-certified Editor in the Life Sciences, Hope has more than 20 years’ experience as a science editor. In the mid-1990s, Hope served as marketing director for one of the first Internet broadcasters in Austin, Texas. From there, she worked for many years as a technical writer at the Department of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where she developed a style guide for standards and practices in the process industry. She then worked as an editorial manager at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York in the Departments of Urology and Medicine. In 2009, Hope started her own consultancy, where she works with scientist-writers in the pharmaceutical industry and in academic environments.

Hope has led seminars at the annual conferences of the Council of Science Editors and the American Medical Writers Association, as well as at the University of Houston, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville.