7 Features of (Good) Technical Writing

Here are 7 features of (good) technical writing:

1. CORRECT. Whether ever else it is, tech writing must be CORRECT, period. If tech writing is not correct, you can throw it directly into the trash basket since nothing else matters as much.
2. APPROPRIATE FOR INTENDED AUDIENCE. Tech writing must be appropriate for its intended audience. This audience can be a general audience, business people, or a specialized group of engineers and scientists. If the writing style and vocabulary does not fit the audience, tech writing will either be met with derision and criticism (because it is too easy for the audience), or will fly off over the heads of a puzzled audience (because it is too hard to understand).
3. CONCISE. Tech writing must be as brief as possible. If the writer can express something in 2 words, she should not use 3 words instead. This is not creative writing. All kinds of editorial asides or anthropomorphic similes and metaphors should be avoided.
4. COMPREHENSIVE. If you are explaining the functions of the buttons on a toolbar, you need to explain ALL of them. If a gadget has two communication ports, you need to explain how each of them is used. Any omission in covering all system components or attributes in a document means an eventual call to the customer service.
5. LOGICAL and SEQUENTIAL. Technical writing information cannot contradict itself. All information, all steps need to make sense with respect to one another. If you need to open a lid in order to reach a button, you need to tell the reader to open the lid first and then to press the button. In the above case, do not instruct the user to press the button and then open the lid.
6. ACTION ORIENTED. You are writing a document to help users take action. Therefore, use action verbs whenever possible, especially in the beginning of procedural steps. ORIGINAL: "Cable A and Cable Z need to be connected now." BETTER: "Connect Cable A to Cable Z."
7. ORGANIZED. Technical documents are organized in the ideal "tree view" fashion. The material is organized in layers, from general to the specific. The document starts with the general aspects of a system and drills down to more specific details later on. For example, you explain what the TopCardPro software accomplishes first (controls access to power plant sites), BEFORE you explain the way to configure an access card with the user info.

The individual chapters and sections should have a logical parent-child-sibling relationship to one another. For example, if you are explaining how to start an engine in Chapter 1, you should also explain how to shut it off within the same chapter since they are conceptually related procedures ("siblings"). The information on how to delete a user from the database ("child") should be placed within a more general chapter or section ("parent") devoted to User Configuration, or Database Management, just to give an example.

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