TIPS ON HOW TO BECOME A GOOD TECHNICAL WRITER.
Introduction
Using Italics and Bold Letters.
Headings.
Links
Images.
Blockquote.
Lists.
Paragraphs
Conclusion.
Introduction
According to Free Dictionary, Writing is defined as the act or process of producing and recording words in a form that can be read and understood. Anybody as far as he/she went to school can be a writer. Being a writer is not the same as being a technical writer, although they are similar; in technical writing, the need for reasoning is needed. Thinking here means expanding in conception, towards what you are writing. Technical writing is where an author writes about a particular subject that requires direction, or explanation, This style of writing has a very different purpose and different characteristics than other writing styles like creative writing, academic writing or business writing. In technical writing, the writer must understand what he or she is meant to write, before putting it down into writing because if a writer does not understand fully what to write, the leap hole will be seen immediately in the audience. Good technical writing is been govern by some secret tips that will be explained later in this article, without these tips an article must be filled with good ideas but wrongly served, the article will be like very delicious food that is being served on a dirty plate. The food might look delicious and have an aromatic smell, but the audience might not be interested in eating anymore due to how it was presented.
What matters in technical writing is how the information is presented to the audience because whenever an audience is reading an article written by a technical writer, he/she is expecting a straight forwards documentation with a good arrangement of wording which includes a good heading, paragraphs, links and the usage of italics when needed, This is the criteria that made up a good article.
Using Italics and Bold Letters.
Italics letters are letters that slope to the right and the text becomes lighter than others. Italics are often used to emphasize a particular word or sentence while bold letters are set characters that are darker and heavier than normal letters.
We will be learning the two basic text formats that have been defined above but we will be taking it gradually for proper understanding.
Italics
To make a phrase in italics, you can surround the words with an underscore(_). For example _Lawrence is handsome_ and would become Lawrence is handsome; you can have more than one sentence written in italics, and you only have to put an underscore at beginning of the sentence and the end of the sentence.
Bold
Similarly, to make phrases bold, you can surround the words with two asterisks (**). This will make the particular words bold, for example,
**Are you saying that Lawrence is a technical writer?**. Here the whole sentence will be written in a bold form as in Are you saying that Lawrence is a technical writer?
Note: You can write words or sentences in bold and italics form at the same time by combining both the asterisks and the underscore. For example:
- *_Do you think that Lawrence is the best?_**
Output: Do you think that Lawrence is the best?
Headings.
Headings are frequently used on websites, magazine articles, and notices, to draw attention to a particular section of a page. They are like the title and subtitle of a page.
To make a header on a page you use the hash mark(#). The # here shows the density of the heading, so the more the # the less dense the words or heading. And for can have from 1 - 6 hashes. it shows the thickness of the heading in descending order.
#This is Lawrence
Output: This is Lawrence
##This is Lawrence 2
output: This is Lawrence 2
###This is Lawrence 3
Output: This is Lawrence 3
####This is Lawrence 4
output: This is Lawrence 4
#####This is Lawrence 5
output: This is Lawrence 5
This is the final heading
This is the final heading.
The order of arrangement depends on what is being used for in an article, But it should not be more than 6hashes.
Links
Links can be defined as the gateway leading from one webpage to another. At the beginning of this article, you will see an underlined word ( Free Dictionary), The Free Dictionary is a word that is embedded with a link, whenever the link is clicked, it redirects you to the referred page.
There are two types of links inline and reference links, although both are used to achieve the same thing, but different methods.
inline links:
To create an inline link, you wrap the link text in brackets([]), and you wrap the link in parenthesis ( () ). For example, let’s create a random link to Lawrence’s GitHub account [Lawrence’s GitHub](https://github.com/Lawrencmagnat). The output will be Lawrence’s GitHub
Note: You can create a link in the header, although it’s awkward, it can still be done.
Reference Links:
As the name implies, the link is actually a reference to another place in the document. Although doing the same work as an inline link but it can be called multiple times within the documents or can be used to change from one page to another.
For example, let’s create a link to one of Lawrence’s articles [Lawrence article](https://link.medium.com/ns0S7BAy9wb). The output will be Lawrence’s article.
hint: It can have two brackets like
[visit google]: www.google.com
[visit Facebook]: www.facebook.com
Images.
Since we have learned how to create links in our document, we have to know how to create an image on our website too. To create an image the syntax used is similarly the same in creating a link. The difference between links and image is that images are prefaced with an exclamation point (!).
Images have two styles, it is called inline and reference image link.
Inline Image Link
To create an inline image link, enter an exclamation point (!), and wrap the alt text in the bracket ( [ ] ). (The alt text is a phrase or sentence that describes the image for the visually impaired.)
For example, to create an image inline like https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdSCer89eMKgubQyyHJZzxxB76H_ObUzBMMQ&usqp=CAU, with an alt that says, Lawrence, this is a link; it can be done by:
.
Output:
Reference Image Link:
For reference image links, you will follow the same pattern as a reference link but must have the exclamation point. For example:
Output:
output:
Blockquote.
The blockquote is used to call special attention to a quote from another source, or design from another article. A blockquote is a sentence or paragraph that’s been specially formatted to draw attention to the reader. For example:
Being Lazy is the most dangerous plague that can happen to a young man in this 21st century.
How to create a blockquote:
To create a blockquote, all you need to do is preface a line with the “greater than” caret ( > ). For example:
> “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.”
outcome:
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course. by William Shakespeare
You can place a caret on each line of the quote. This is useful if your quote spans multiple paragraphs. For example:
> “If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
>―William Shakespeare.
output:
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
William Shakespeare.
> “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
>―William Shakespeare.
output:
“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
William Shakespeare.
N/B: Blockquote can contain other writing features, such as Italics, Bolds, Images, and links.
Lists:
A list is used for arrangement. There are two main types of list
- The Unordered List
- Ordered List
The Unordered List:
To create an Unordered list, you’ll preface each of them in a single asterisk(*). Each list item also gets its line. For example, a grocery list might look like this:
*Milk
*Bread
*Chocolate
*Honey
Output:
- Milk
- Bread
- Chocolate
- Honey
Ordered List:
An ordered list is prefaced with numbers instead asterisks(*). For example:
Lawrence has written 6 articles and they are:
1. Git and GitHub.
2. JavaScript
3. ChatGPT AI
4. Draw-io or Lucidchart
5. Asynchronous JavaScript
6. Introduction to Technology.
The outcome will be the same as the input, that’s why it’s called an ordered list.
Hint: You can write a sub-list using an ordered or unordered list; you can even combine both list styling by using the ordered list as the main list and the unordered list styling as the sub-list.
Paragraphs
According to The Britannica Dictionary, a paragraph is a part of a piece of writing that usually deals with one subject, that begins on a new line, and that is made up of one or more sentences. A good paragraph is meant to have a complete subject completion in accordance with the main idea that is being discussed in the article.
Looking closely, you will see that we cut/left the line that we were writing before and started on a new line, we did it because the subject idea that we are deliberating on in the previous paragraph is over, for the readers’ clarity we jump into a line in other to send a message that the idea is now over, that we will be entering into a new idea; in the same articles. Because a complete article is made up of blocks of ideas.
Some writers are always prone to errors whenever paragraphing is called, they continue breaking into new lines whereas leaving the initial idea uncompleted. The idea of a paragraph should be completed before entering into a new paragraph. The length of the paragraph doesn’t matter, what matters is the ideas to showcase. A paragraph might be long but useless while some snappy but powerful vice-versa. Paragraphs express the writers’ feelings, understanding and knowledge towards certain research.
A paragraph should not have too many hard breaks rather it should have a few hard breaks and mainly comprises soft breaks. You might be asking what hard breaks and soft breaks are. A hard break is a process of adding multiple dots (Ellipsis points) in a sentence.
For example, Queen is Lawrence’s friend…….
while a soft break ends with a normal full stop. A paragraph is highly needed in an article because it aids the reader to understand the writer’s points bit by bit until the whole point is completed.
Conclusion.
Technical writing as I said early needs accuracy, without accuracy, it will be just rubbish. Although one can not wake up and turn into a good writer “NEVER”, becoming a good writer is by practising every day. With the knowledge of what you have learned keep practising until you become stronger than you expected.
N/B: Technical writing refers to any writing that deals with a specialized area usually in science or industry. Because technical writing usually deals with an object, a process, or an abstract idea, the language is utilitarian, stressing accuracy rather than style.
