Technical Writing

Technical writing can be very simple if you know the basics and guidelines of it. I enjoy the art of it. Many people do not like the tedious aspect of trying to plan, clarify, simplify, choose the right words, or committing to the writing process in general. Well, we technical writers’ practice these regularly to improve our skills as writers. We try to master the small details to create a bigger picture for people that is clear, concise, and comprehensive.

Planning:                                               

• Identify your audience and what their expectations will be
• Know your purpose and the materials you will need
• Understand the writing task
• Organize your thoughts and the materials
• Make sure that your time management is good enough to calculate in the time to write, review, revise, and edit

Clarity:

• When technical writing avoids jargon, a vocabulary particular to a place of work (abbreviations, slang). And when you have audience familiarity, you can determine the appropriate use of jargon.
• Define the unfamiliar. If you have to use an abbreviation, then you must define it in its first occurrence and put the abbreviation in parenthesis. Also, italicizing the first occurrence of unfamiliar words can make them stand out.

Brevity:

• Never use two words when one word will do the job just fine. Less is more for technical writing. Since you are shooting for clarity and conciseness, get to the point you want to get across to readers.
• Get to the essential message. The most important information should be presented first.
• Remove redundancy and combine overlapping sentences when possible.

Simplicity:

• Specific details are desirable, but be careful to balance detail with audience needs for clarity—significance is more important.
• Use your details wisely. Many people want to add as much specific detail as possible, but this can cause a lot of confusion when other people read the information. It will not be as comprehensive as if they would have kept it simple, and the main point gets away from the reader.

Right Wording:

• Needless complexity

• Watch out for too many abstract nouns in technical writing.
• Needless words

• Choose clear word meanings.
• Do not overuse pronouns when technical writing, especially “it” and “this,” because it is often difficult to identify the antecedent.
• Avoid too many “to be” verbs and excess words that slow the comprehension.
• Weak vs. Strong

Active Voice:

• In technical writing, writers want to communicate as efficiently as possible and active voice is more straightforward. As well as stronger than passive voice.
• You want a natural sound, so to help with this read your passages out loud to determine how natural it sounds.

Writing Process:

• Good writing doesn’t happen overnight; it can be a natural talent, but like everything else, you have to work at it to make it perfect or as close as you can. It requires planning, drafting, rereading, revising, and editing.
• Learning and improvement to become a better technical writer require self-review, peer-review, subject-matter, expect feedback, and practice.
• You cannot take any shortcuts when technical writing. The only shortcuts that exist are within the written comprehension of the text.