Technical Writing Tips & Tricks

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During my 25+ year technical writing career, I've learned many tips and tricks to help ensure accuracy and quality and improve overall productivity. As documentation specialists, these strategies help our audience quickly interpret and digest our content. Often, we're merely removing impediments to a reader's experience.

The tips and tricks below are complemented by my article The Eight Pillars of Technical Writing. If you can turn this simple guidance into habit, you will overnight improve your career as a tech writer and your value to your clients or employer.

Focus on Structure: Organize your content logically. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break down and clarify information. This not only makes a document easier to navigate, but also helps maintain a logical flow of information.

Get Two Monitors: A dual-monitor setup at your workstation can improve your efficiency and productivity—not to mention your happiness and satisfaction level with something you do for 40-60 hours per week. And before you say it's too expensive, realize that large (27" or larger) high-quality 4K monitors are sometimes priced as low as $200-300. Consider going the extra mile with a dual-arm monitor mount and you'll be the coolest tech writer on the block. To learn more, see my article "Ultimate Workstation for Technical Writers."

Initial Caps on Multiword Hashtags: There's two primary reasons to employ initial caps in your social media hashtags: 1) They allow the text parsers of screen readers to pronounce each word in the hashtag separately, helping physically challenged users like the blind and those with dyslexia and 2) they improve readability for non-challenged readers. Establishing this habit improves the game of any tech writer or IT professional.

Practice Active Learning: Stay updated with the latest technology and marketplace developments, including any changes to regulatory oversight that affect your particular industry segment.

Continuous learning enhances your ability to simplify complex concepts and improve the overall quality of your deliverables. LinkedIn Learning, available with any Premium plan and for as little as $20 per month, provides thousands of courses (many of which include certification) to help you actively engage in learning and training.

Proof Social Media Posts: This simple act can save a technical writer or IT professional embarrassment among clients and colleagues. Proofing social media posts requires relatively little time (your posts should be short anyway) and is particularly critical for writers of any type, particularly those of the technical variety. Blatant errors in posts, including misspellings, poor grammar, and lousy formatting send a message to your followers and prospective customers that you're not ready for prime time.

This is the burden of being a tech writer. Others, particularly non-writers, will expect your posts to be perfect. There's a lot of psychology involved in how others perceive you (which affects the jobs you win and the success of your projects).

Solicit & Listen to Feedback: Seek feedback from those in your professional community, including readers, prospects, customers, clients, and peers. Constructive criticism can highlight areas for improvement that you might not otherwise see, helping you significantly improve your approach to IT documentation.

Keep Documents Current: Technology and enterprise processes evolve. Ensure that your documents are regularly updated and current. To remain accurate, they must reflect the latest information or changes in the subject matter. This is particular true for "living documents" that have a major impact on enterprise operations, such as standard operating procedures and policy statements.

Use Visual Aids: Diagrams, flowcharts, photos, screenshots, and tables convey information and explain concepts more effectively than just text. Graphical elements are a great way to break up the monotony of text and provide visual relief, enhancing comprehension and introducing much-needed white space that enhances professionalism and improves readability.

Good Luck

There are a variety of actions and strategies that can help you achieve the goal of being a more effective and valuable technical writing resource in your company or for your clients. Strive to make the above list habit and you will immediately improve your effectiveness (not to mention your satisfaction with your career).

And not to turn on the pressure, but those who choose to mail it in and blow off these recommendations should be reminded that some of your competitors will elect to take on the burden of continual improvement. Those who do not will be left holding the bag and at a gross strategic disadvantage. Just like the Luddites who refuse to use AI, they'll lose contracts and jobs and be relegated to the "not quite as good as the other tech writers" pile.

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.