The Eight Pillars of Technical Writing

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Technical writing, a vibrant and essential layer of modern communications within enterprise organizations and IT departments, stands on several foundational pillars. A clear understanding of these pillars can help hiring managers, HR personnel, recruiters, and junior technical writers. Senior technical writers should already know all of this, quite honestly—but a bit of brush up never hurts, now does it??

These technical writing pillars help ensure clarity, accuracy, and overall effectiveness when researching, documenting, or publishing/releasing complex documentation.?

Eight Pillars of Technical Writing

Mastery of the following eight pillars will help any technical writer, junior or senior, to advance their career and help ensure successful documentation projects and satisfied clients or bosses. A basic understanding of these pillars will also help job recruiters and hiring agents to obtain the best resource(s) for a project or position (Hint: Ask applicants questions about these important pillars during interviews.)?

Accuracy

Obsess Over Accuracy: A cornerstone of technical writing is accuracy. While information must always be correct, it often also requires verification. However, in the real world, verification is not always practical or possible. Often, technical writers are extracting tribal knowledge from a single long-term employee and documenting it, with no resource at the organization that can verify the data. Budget and time restrictions can also limit bandwidth for verification.

This critical pillar demands detailed research and a thorough understanding of the subject matter. Errors can lead to misinterpretation or lack of comprehension on the part of intended audiences. In technical fields, a lack of documentation and communications accuracy can result in significant and negative consequences, including loss of shareholder trust, safety gaps, and negative public relations—among many others.

Audience Focus

Focus on Your Audience and Usability: Technical documents, particularly in an enterprise organization, are tools designed for efficiency, compliance, or other important corporate functions. As such, technical documents must be designed with your audience in mind and involve serious consideration for how the information will be accessed and used. Audience-focused enterprise documents might include elements such as effective indexing, clear navigation, and perhaps visual aids like annotated diagrams or flowcharts to enhance understanding.

Of even greater importance is speaking at the level of a defined audience. Subject matter experts, particularly in specific industry segments or disciplines, demand a very different tone and type of content than laypeople and generalized audiences (such as with product user guides or public websites). This goes as far as helping define the format and type of communication. Professional and technical audiences are acclimated to reading long-form documents such as complex white papers. A more generalized audience, however, may require much shorter and less technical documentation.?

Clarity

Practice Clarity: Technical documents must be clear and unambiguous. The goal of a good tech writer should be to make complex ideas accessible to a strategically defined audience (or audiences). This involves using straightforward language, avoiding jargon unless necessary, and structuring information in a way that is easy to follow. Clarity ensures that the reader can understand the content without needing additional explanation. Sometimes, clarity is achieved by taking something complex and explaining it in simple terms, somewhat like a culinary reduction.?

Clarity ensures that the reader can understand the content without needing additional explanation.

Completeness

Determine Completeness: In addition to accuracy, the completeness of a technical writing project or document is paramount. However, completeness is driven almost exclusively by the project parameters and pre-defined characteristics of the deliverable(s). Thus, what is complete for one project will be incomplete for another. This is where pre-planning and a hyper-clear definition of project goals and deliverables is of tremendous value to all stakeholders.?

Objectivity

Be Objective: Technical writing should be devoid of personal bias or opinion. The focus should be on facts, procedures, and results. This objectivity ensures that the information remains reliable and trustworthy, serving as a neutral guide for users. Objectivity is like a cousin of accuracy in the world of technical writing.

One simple example of objectivity is use of alphabetical lists where order is not already defined. This ensures that readers or viewers do not make an assumption that the first item in a text list (or last item in a video) is the best or somehow stands out from the others. In addition, use bullet lists where numbered lists are not absolutely necessary.

Technical writing should be devoid of personal bias or opinion. The focus should be on facts, procedures, and results.

Parallel Structure

Ensure Consistency and Parallel Structure: Whether it is regarding terminology, formatting, or style, consistency helps maintain the integrity of any document or collection of documents (like SOPs or training courses). Consistent use of terms, abbreviations, and style guides/citation standards aids in reader comprehension and improves the overall professionalism of any document or file repository.

Examples of style guides and citation standards include the Chicago Manual of Style and a number of publications from the APA (American Psychological Association), the MLA (Modern Language Association), and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

Whether it is regarding terminology, formatting, or style, consistency helps maintain the integrity of any document or collection.

Terseness

Be Terse and Concise: In technical writing projects, brevity is the soul of efficiency. Information should be presented in the most direct manner possible. This doesn't mean cutting corners, but rather expressing ideas with precision, eliminating redundancy, and focusing on what is essential.

When is the last time you heard your boss say, "Your latest document is great...nice and verbose"? I consider the goal of terseness to be embedded in all stages of my technical writing or instructional development projects. I particularly focus on terseness when proofing a final draft, forensically seeking even a single word that does not add true value and should be removed.

Version Control

Utilize Version Control: Most technical writing and documentation projects involve a number of drafts leading up to a release version (as in software publishing; often called 1.0). Some larger tech writing projects can involve dozens or even hundreds of draft versions and thousands of individual updates.

Adoption of a versioning system, including a file and folder naming convention, is often an overlooked element at the launch of a tech writing project. Savvy technical writing managers and contractors have one or more document versioning systems up their sleeve. Often, document management systems (sometimes called content management systems) will offer in-built version control. Another powerful option is DITA XML, a set of XML markup languages for authoring and publishing technical documentation.

Hey Curt, Where is AI?

Only hours into the publication of this article, I realized that it features a glaring fault: Where is AI? The power of user-friendly AI and machine learning allows all types of technical writers, from generalized to specialized, to leverage this relatively new technology for two primary purposes: Significant increases in both efficiency and productivity.

Watch for my next article, The Ninth Technical Writing Pillar: AI.

Good Luck

By adhering to these pillars, technical writers can transform complex information into documents that are not only informative, but also practical, accessible, and affordable (the budget demands respect, after all).

Bonus Tip: Alphabetize any list, be it numbered or unordered. Even if it is only subconsciously perceived by your audience, this makes it appear that you have your act together. It is technical writing, after all.

But that's just my opinion. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

— Curt Robbins, Senior Technical Writer

P.S.: I'm currently taking on new clients. I enjoy helping companies with their documentation and communications strategy and implementation. Contact me to learn about my reasonable rates and fast turnaround.