Technical Writing Blog

Would you like to start your own tech writing agency? This is a big decision and a lot of thinking needs to happen. Understandably, this is not a solution for everyone and this is completely fine. However, if you are entertaining the possibility, this post can be useful for you – we are going to…

Technical documentation is viewed as something handy and nobody would ever doubt that it is necessary to have one. On the other hand, technical writers are faced with the reality of people underestimating what they are doing. We’ve painted a dreadful picture of a post-apocalyptic world where tech writers don’t exist anymore. But, sometimes, it…

All technical writers are famous for being meticulous about grammar, style, and punctuation. Reviewers and editors are even more scrupulous. If we count the time wasted on checking grammar in user guides, it will probably drive us to the conclusion that this is one of the most important parts of the process. Wait, what?… Did…

Sometimes, you need to become a technical writing pioneer. This often happens at startups or, perhaps, your company decided to terminate contracts with outsourcing help authoring companies and wants to start its own thing going. Being the first technical writer in a company has a lot of challenges. But don’t fret – as long as…

Technical documentation teams can have different approaches to doing many things. A lot of the stuff can be altered in help authoring, leaving that to personal preference, but when it comes to choosing a place to store user manuals, one needs to be really careful. Today, we will talk about using a CMS for delivering…

Millennials are here. This is how generations work – one minute they are toddlers, the next – your company’s executives. We are talking about practically the whole world and it is hard to believe that people from different cultures and backgrounds could have any resemblance. But with globalization orchestrating our lives there’s not that much…

The ability to work with SMEs efficiently makes a huge difference in technical writing. A lot of things like depth, clarity, and precision of descriptions in user manuals depend on how well you communicate your requests to an SME and how successful you are at interpreting and follow-up questions. Today, we will try to come…

Readability is something your readers should not concern themselves about. It is your job, as a technical writer, to make sure that ‘OMG this is so difficult to read’ never crosses their mind. This is not something, however, that can be approached mindlessly and solved just like that. To improve readability, first, you need a…

There are strong reasons for having a documentation plan. The main one being – setting up a clear and open help authoring process. Creating a documentation plan means giving every team member an exhaustive reference point. The whole team will act within the guidelines of the plan and that ensures consistency and efficiency. Structure of…

According to a poll we set up among the techcomm people, successful update of user manuals is among the most troublesome areas of help authoring. What you need to understand is that building reliable and clear processes for documentation maintenance is the key to success here. This article will explain how to set up the…