Technical Writing Blog

A Software Design Document (SDD) is known by different names; it is often called a software design specification, a software requirement document, or technical specs. This is a detailed description of the overall architecture of a piece of software. Why create it? Just imagine: your team has spent several months building a software product, and…

Many working environments demand collaborative writing and editing of documents. Nowadays, such collaborations are simplified. The participants don’t need to be co-located and work from the same office; they are free to reside in different geographic locations. In addition, documents are quickly and efficiently distributed through emails, phones, and chat or conferencing tools that let…

When you write documentation every day, you can’t help noticing that this process has phases and cycles that, in the majority of cases, are the same. They are called Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC). Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC) is a systematic process of document creation that has a cyclic order. Technical writers and content…

For a coon’s age, people dreamed of something like a babel fish from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That fish is placed in someone’s ear so that a person could hear any language translated into their language. A Chinese proverb says: To learn a language is to have one more window from which to…

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. Nelson Mandela Every technical writer knows the single-sourcing method that emerged more than 30 years ago. It increases the reuse of existing written content instead of…

Imagine a situation: you are to master a piece of software but you don’t know what to begin with. And you find a user guide for your product. You start looking it through and see that it contains information in a wide variety of languages. The first idea that comes to your mind is: what…

Facile pen, subject knowledge, and ability to transform technical subtleties into clarities for the end-users – these are must-have talents for a technical writer. Indeed, there’s more to it – we have already written about the skills of a good tech writer. Today we’ll focus on how technical writers start a new documentation project, what…

New words and phrases tend to somehow miraculously seep into our everyday life. This is regular for the world of modern technology. And as a person working closely with words and technology, have you ever wondered how these words are born? Some of the technical terms contain entertaining facts, so you can impress your friends…

Technical drawing today is an essential part of technical documentation. Such industries as civil engineering, architecture, shipbuilding, aerospace engineering, astronautics, or medical engineering can’t help using technical drawings. Those technical writers who work on documentation like that, are to be able to create technical drawings using special software. I should say, that is another must-have…

Have you ever created a resume for a job, prepared a presentation, or written an email to your boss? Then you’ve already written technical documents. Technical writing includes a wide range of documents. They include instructions, reviews, reports, newsletters, presentations, web pages, brochures, proposals, letters, fliers, graphics, memos, press releases, handbooks, specifications, style guides, agendas,…