What is Technical Writing?

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It's easy to get caught up in the granularity and detail of relatively complex disciplines like technical writing. This article is dedicated to the subject matter experts who, over the years, have helped me successfully create effective documentation using the tools of technical writing.

So let's address the question: What is technical writing?

Technical writing is a specialized form of communication that has the goal of conveying complex information in a clear, concise, and easily understood manner. It's an essential form of communication in industries and fields where precision and clarity are paramount, including technology and IT, engineering and aerospace, science, finance, marketing, and many others.

Technical Writing: Purpose & Audience

The primary goal of technical writing is to inform or instruct. Unlike creative writing, which might aim to entertain or evoke emotion, technical writing focuses on providing factual information. The audience for technical documents often includes professionals, technicians, or end-users who need accurate, step-by-step guidance for technical products or processes.

Technical Writing: Characteristics

Okay, we've defined technical writing and its basic purpose and audience. But—more precisely—what is technical writing?

A number of qualities contribute to solid, professional technical writing and efforts to document policy, process, and procedure (in addition to products, services, and regulatory oversight). While meeting deliverable deadlines and client/employer budgets is super important, there are a number of elements of technical writing that simply cannot be ignored, regardless of the scope of a project.

• Accuracy: Information must be precise and specific. Errors in technical writing can lead to significant consequences, like product malfunctions, safety issues, or failure to meet regulatory requirements. Also, from a psychological perspective, errors encourage documentation consumers to lose confidence in the content. Information consumers think to themselves: If this document doesn't embrace basic grammar or features poor layout and formatting, what else has it gotten wrong? The reader/user's lack of faith in a poorly executed document or communication will naturally bleed over to infect a company's brand.

Errors in technical writing can lead to significant consequences, like product malfunctions, safety issues, or failure to meet regulatory requirements.

• Clarity: Technical documents must be clearly stated and unambiguous. Jargon must be minimized (unless it's necessary for a particular audience). When jargon is employed, it must be clearly defined (such as in introductory text or a glossary).
• Completeness: Is the technical writing lacking any important information? Is the scope and depth of the content appropriate for its intended audience(s)? Completeness is difficult to gauge and an important reason why truly seasoned technical writing resources are of such great value to any enterprise organization. This should be determined at the beginning of a documentation project, with the input and approval of all stakeholders. From a project management perspective, determining at what state completeness is achieved also defines the scope of the development effort.
• Conciseness: While detail is crucial, redundancy should be avoided to keep the reader's attention focused on critical information. While verbose might be the rule for a spy novel, terse is the rule when it comes to good technical writing.
• Structure & Flow: Technical documents often follow a logical, hierarchical structure (sometimes based on a standard such as a style guide or best practices). This makes it easier for document consumers to navigate and find exactly what they need, when they need it.

Technical Writing: Types

An extremely wide variety of types of technical writing exists. From white papers that are useful for marketing to standard operating procedures that satisfy regulatory oversight, technical writing can be challenging to describe based simply on the large number of ways in which it can manifest as documentation.

In addition to the types listed below, another variable is media format. Is the content text, audio, video, or all of these? How is it distributed and in what exact file format(s)? These are all parameters that should be established at the launch of a technical writing project to ensure successful results.

• Installation Guides: Installation guides are typically targeted at technicians who install particular software applications or hardware systems. Installation guides often mirror and enhance seminars or training courses. However, sometimes installation guides are targeted at consumers to help them begin using a product or service (these documents are typically called user guides or user manuals).
• Software Documentation: Software documentation itself (only a small part of technical writing overall, but a huge field in itself) is very detailed and involves a number of document and communications types. These include APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) documents, training courses, user guides, installation manuals, SOPs, and content marketing (among many others).

Software documentation itself (only a small part of technical writing overall) is very detailed and involves a number of document and communications types.

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): SOPs not only satisfy many regulatory requirements, but they give companies an opportunity to analyze and improve their processes and procedures, potentially leading to greater efficiency, lower overhead costs, and improved profits.
• Style Guides: A style guide is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. Style guides dictate the rules for content creation at a particular organization. While some enterprise organizations create their own style guides, others rely up industry standard style guides, such as the AP Stylebook, the Microsoft Writing Style Guide, and the Chicago Manual of Style (originally published in 1906!). Long and detailed style guides are often called style manuals.
• Training Courses: Training in the form of infosheets, seminars, courses, and other resources is one of the oldest forms of technical writing. Training can embrace a variety of media formats (the trend is toward blended learning, a mix of many formats and approaches) and be self-paced or instructor-led. Instructor-led training is often conducted online and employs video conferencing to reduce expense and make the process of knowledge transfer more efficient. Self-paced training is the most efficient and least expensive.

White papers carry a particular cachet and are employed by many of the top enterprise organizations and think tanks.

• User Manuals: This is documentation that informs a specific audience about how to use a product or particular software application or app. User manuals are often public-facing and, thus, must fully comply with an organization's style guide and satisfy marketing or external publication policies while not becoming overly complex.
• White Papers: These are detailed reports about specific technologies, innovations, or methodologies that are typically public facing. Among the more challenging technical writing projects and popular among marketing departments and social media managers, white papers carry a particular cachet and are employed by many of the top enterprise organizations and think tanks to educate journalists and stakeholders.

Technical Writing: Required Skills

Any enterprise organization looking to contract with or hire technical writing resources should focus on professionals who are good at and experienced in the following tasks.

• Ability to Interface with SMEs: Any technical writer worth their salt is also good at interfacing with and interviewing subject matter experts within an organization to extract, analyze, and document their knowledge. This process, involving something popularly called knowledge transfer, takes tribal knowledge and processes it with the intent of making it available to appropriate parties within the organization so that the company might enjoy an improvement in efficiency and gain a strategic advantage over its competitors.
• Editing: Editing helps ensure that technical writing documentation is free from errors, mechanically sound, and as concise as possible. The best editing helps ensure accuracy, completeness, and audience appropriateness.
• Research: The ability to leverage a variety of tools to investigate and better understand complex subjects is critical. High quality research skills are a hallmark of the best senior technical writing resources and essential for development of a variety of documentation types. AI is an increasingly valuable tool in technical writing research.
• Technical Knowledge: A basic understanding of the subject matter helps in communicating effectively with experts. Often, this path leads to a search for specialized technical writers who focus on a particular area (such as software APIs), a specific industry, or a discipline.
• Writing: The best technical writers are able to craft text that is straightforward, unambiguous, terse, and tuned to the knowledge level and mindset of its intended audience. While basic writing skills alone do not constitute a good technical writer, they are obviously a critical skill in any technical writing toolbox.

Good Luck

Technical writing is not just about technology and not just about writing. It's about translating complex ideas into practical and accessible knowledge, ensuring that information is not only delivered, but also understood and applied correctly. This is why technical writing is an indispensable skill in our increasingly technical world.

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.