Technical writing

Technical writing, a subset of technical communication, is used in fields as diverse as computer hardware and software, chemistry, the aerospace industry, robotics, finance, consumer electronics, and biotechnology.

Technical writing (aka Information Development) exists to communicate and disseminate useful information. Technical communications are created and distributed by most employees in service organizations today, especially by professional staff and management. Writing well is difficult and time-consuming, and writing in a technical way and about technical subjects compounds the difficulties. To be useful, information must be understood and acted upon. Fortunately, tools and techniques are available to make writing more accessible and easy to understand.

An everyday example of technical writing is a recipe for baking a cake. In order to bake a cake, you must first assemble ingredients (such as flour, sugar, eggs and baking powder) and then perform a series of operations on those ingredients. You beat the eggs, add the sugar and flour and so on, then pour the batter into a prepared pan. Finally, you bake the cake for a fixed amount of time at a specified temperature. Each step and piece of information is essential to communicating the process of cake baking. The amount of detail the writer must provide depends on how knowledgeable the audience is. A cookery book intended for young students might explain how to properly measure the ingredients. When writing for an audience of master chefs, the writer can assume the reader already understands the basics of cake baking and can leave out all but the essential instructions.

Communicating with the Audience

Technical writing is communication, the primary aim of which is to convey a particular piece of information to a particular audience for a particular purpose. It is often exposition about scientific subjects, and various technical subjects associated with sciences. Technical writing is "translating technical ideas into words that a specific audience will understand." Audience analysis is thus a key feature of all technical writing. Technical writing is "a translation of complex technical concepts into simple language intended to enable a specific user to perform a specific task in a specific way." Technical writing is usually done by a technical writer.

Effective communications requires quality content, language, format, and more. To present the appropriate content, it is imperative to understand one’s audience and writing purpose. If the informational medium does not communicate the information that the writer/designer intends and what he or she wants the audience to understand, then the communication is meaningless.

A "technical" approach to writing

How one writes is as important as what one writes. Language itself is important to enable readers to understand and believe the written text. Language affects a reader's ability to comprehend and assimilate what a writer is presenting. Furthermore, people can, and frequently do, judge things by outward appearances; it is essential to make good impressions when communicating in a business setting. When one communicates (whether writing, giving a speech, or talking on the telephone), information must be presented effectively, consistently and, to a large degree, attractively. These elements strongly affect perceived writer and organizational credibility and professionalism -- highly sought-after commodities for individual and organizational success.

Format, organization, and style are important in that they make information available, accessible, and readable. Format, and the like, are the "how" of a written presentation. A central tenet of technical writing is that the more likely the reader is to need to see a piece of information, the more accessible it should be made to the reader. Illustrations are an essential part of technical writing, as are proper uses of natural metaphor.

Format choices not only aid understanding, but they also give a document the highly sought-after technical or business "look" that organizations strive or hope for ("Corporate identity" promotion is a natural part of technical writing). The technical writer's main role is to inform, to instruct, to persuade, to inspire and to involve the audience with the information.

Definitions

Most technical writing positions are still primarily offered to those who can write effective end-user manuals, system design documents, Web sites, and the like for engineering and IT firms. However, the need for technical writing is much broader than this.

A good technical writer can create informational media about a complicated technical subject or task in ways that almost anyone can clearly understand.

There are many definitions of technical writing. It has been seen as its own species of business writing. Technical writing is a specialized, structured way of writing, in which information is presented in a format and manner that best suits the cognitive and psychological needs of the readers, so they can respond to a document as its author intended, and achieve the purpose related to that document. This purpose is primarily education (if secondarily it is also persuasion, technical writing may sometimes overlap with advertising or marketing). Technical writing is writing formatted and shaped to make reading and understanding as simple, poignant, unequivocal, and enjoyable as possible (i.e., "user friendly"). The competent technical writer continuously asks: "What does the audience know, and what do they need to know, and in what order do they need to know it?"

Precision in technical writing is critical because if anything is described incorrectly, readers may act improperly on what is said, causing mistakes, problems at work or, in rare cases, company liability.

The Society for Technical Communication is probably the largest technical writing association. The STC defines technical communication as "The process of gathering information from experts and presenting it to an audience in a clear, easily understandable form". They add: "Technical writing and editing is an umbrella term for any sort of professional communication. It's the interface between your ideas and the rest of the world."

Other definitions:

"Technical writing is the presentation of information that helps the reader solve a particular problem. Technical communicators write, design, and/or edit proposals, manuals, web pages, lab reports, newsletters, and many other kinds of professional documents."

"The transfer of specialized information from subject matter experts to those who need to use it."

Tech writing 2.0

"Tech Writing 2.0" is a term coined by Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf for the application of Web 2.0 technologies to technical documentation. "Tech Writing 2.0" is a move away from static, broadcast, documentation to more participative and aggregative information resources.

Deliverables

Technical writing is most often associated with online Help and user manuals; however, there are other forms of technical content created by technical writers, including:

Alarm clearing procedures
Annumciator response procedures
Application programming interface programmers' guides
Certification and accreditation activities
Corporate Annual Reports
Corporate disclaimers
Feature Design documentation
Getting Started cards or guides
Hardware maintenance and repair procedures
Industrial film or video scripts
Installation guides
Magazine articles
Network administrators' guides
Network configuration guides
Network recovery guides
Policies and procedures
Presentations
Proposals
Reference documents
Release notes
Reports
Requirements documentation
Scientific reports
Site preparation guides
Specifications
Technical papers
Training materials
Troubleshooting guides
Tutorials (multimedia)
User guides
White papers

Associations

External links

Technical writers

Technical writing