Technical Writing Blog

Technical writing is mostly associated with user manuals, software documentation, and the like. However, technical writing is an essential part of every industry now. That’s why, in this blog post, we want to describe some unexpected documentation examples that will bust misconceptions. Information Technology (IT) Writing Speaking of IT, this sphere is more than just…

From time to time, in this blog, we turn to analyzing the job market for tech writers, to provide you, our readers, with fresh and precise info on who’s hiring. And, well, the industries at the top of the list are pretty much the same: IT, engineering, spacecraft, gas and oil, medicine, and a couple…

If you think of it, dozens or even hundreds of criteria can be used to determine the quality of technical documentation. This blog is actually more than us listing some criteria, this is an exhaustive guide you can follow to find areas of improvement. We will look at this subject from two perspectives – from…

Don’t be cruel to your user manuals. Treat them well and your efforts will pay off. Happy customers will be the currency! Not Taking Mobile Readers Into Account The share of mobile traffic for 2019 was more than 50%. That says something. Technical documentation is perhaps not the resource with the highest mobile traffic numbers,…

We hear the term “topic-based authoring” quite a lot. ClickHelp is software for help writers that supports the topic-based approach. But how did it come to be? What makes topic-based authoring superior in modern techcomm? And, finally, how is it different from modular help writing? Let’s try figuring this out. Predecessor of Topic-Based Authoring For…

One of various things technical writers can do is compose questionnaires and write interview questions. Users are the perfect candidates for being interviewed! Goals of these interviews can vary, we will talk about that in a moment. For now, we would like to point out that users can be your best advocates and they have…

Our previous post was addressed to problems with technical documentation. So, we set up a poll on our Telegram Channel. According to it, technical writers’ biggest concern is that people don’t read documentation. Imagine how frustrating this is – all the work you put in just to learn it was pointless. This sounds demotivating. Let’s…

There are certain issues that are very common for technical documentation teams all over the world. We will not only name them in this blog post but will also provide comprehensive solutions. Let’s begin. You Don’t Have a User Manual Or, rather, you wouldn’t call what you have a user manual. This is easily the…

Technical documentation is very complicated as it is. Don’t let your readers get lost in it! Give them a helping hand – navigation. Ideally, readers don’t need to be conscious of navigation elements they use. Moving between help topics should feel intuitive and seamless. This can be achieved if you have the right toolset at…

Why do we recommend using visual elements in technical documentation? Well, the answer is simple – the human brain is very good at distinguishing colors and understanding patterns. So, when you add maps, graphs, charts, infographics, dashboards, etc. to text, you are doing a big favor to readers and yourself. Using visualization techniques as a…