TechieCognito: How I improved my technical writing 😁

Photo by Tim Arterbury on Unsplash

In this article am going to work you through what technical writing is, what I have learned so far and why I joined the TechieCognito Bootcamp.

💪 Introduction

Technical writing to me, I see it as an art 🎨 of writing code 💻, you try to explain what’s happening inside the code, give descriptive information on how to use it by providing a step-by-step guide. Technical skills combined with Technical writing skills are a superpower in a world that is increasingly writing-heavy that’s why I decided to join this Boot camp called TechieCognito it’s a 3-month program where I intend to improve my Technical writing skills. Technical writing skills take time to build and the best time to start doing so is now. So don’t let anything hold you back.

📑 What is TechieCognito

TechieCognito is a community 👪 where tech talents can scale up their career with the right support and mentorship. We are primarily focused on growing beginners to intermediate levels for market fit and partner with organizations to enable talent pipelines and placement. We are a non-profit organization set to discover brilliant tech talents in Africa. The program is divided into three groups:

• Android Track
• Technical Writing Track
• Web Frontend Track

I am currently enrolled on the Technical writing track. We were officially onboarded on the 7th of February when the mentors introduced what the program is all about, what we intended to achieve and learn. On the 11th of February, we had our first check-in call with our mentor where she explained what Technical writing is all about, some of the materials we are going to use.

📄What is Technical Writing

Technical writing is the art 🎨 of providing detail-oriented instruction to help users understand a specific skill or product.

And a technical writer is someone who writes these instructions, otherwise known as technical documentation or tutorials. This could include user manuals, online support articles, or internal docs for coders/API (Application Programming Interface) developers.

Technical writing is not about explaining what you think. It’s about changing what the readers think.

During our check-in call, our mentor emphasized the biggest factor to consider when you are writing a technical article is your intended/expected audience. It should always be at the forefront of your mind. To understand your readers, ask yourself the following questions before you start writing:

• Who are my readers?
• What do they need?
• Where will they be reading?
• When will they be reading?
• Why will they be reading?
• How will they be reading?

💁 Why did I join the program

• To Improve and write better technical articles.
• To have an interest in writing technical documentation.
• To guide others who are interested in technical writing on how they can start writing.
• To get rid of Writer Syndrome and Writer Blockers.

🗃 Google Technical Writing Course

Before you consider writing, it is necessary to have a good grasp of English, its tenses, spelling and basic grammar. Your readers don’t want to read an article riddled with incorrect grammar and poor word choices. Our mentor introduces us to this free course (Google Technical Writing Course) to help guide us through everything we need to learn and can also give us a major confidence boost to kick-start our writing journey.

I will try to summarize each chapter of the course, the total number of chapters in the course is 12 chapters.

Chapter 1: Just enough grammar: This unit provides just enough grammar to understand the remainder of the course. If you already know some grammar, move on to Words. Otherwise, read on. For simplicity’s sake, this unit takes a few shortcuts; grammatical topics are wildly more complicated than this unit suggests.

Chapter 2: Word: When writing or editing, learn to recognize terms that might be unfamiliar to some or all of your target audience. When you spot such a term, take one of the following two tactics:

• If the term already exists, link to a good existing explanation. (Don’t reinvent the wheel.)
• If your document is introducing the term, define the term. If your document is introducing many terms, collect the definitions into a glossary.

Chapter 3: Active Voice and Passive Voice: The vast majority of sentences in technical writing should be in active voice. This unit teaches you how to do the following:

• Distinguish passive voice from an active voice.
• Convert passive voice to active voice because the active voice is usually clearer.

Chapter 4: Clear Sentences: Comedy writers seek the funniest results, horror writers strive for the scariest, and technical writers aim for the clearest. In technical writing, clarity takes precedence over all other rules. This unit suggests a few ways to make your sentences beautifully clear.

Chapter 5: Short Sentences: Finding the shortest documentation implementation takes time but is ultimately worthwhile. Short sentences communicate more powerfully than long sentences, and short sentences are usually easier to understand than long sentences.

Chapter 6: List and Tables: Good lists can transform technical chaos into something orderly. Technical readers generally love lists. Therefore, when writing, seek opportunities to convert prose into lists.

Chapter 7: Paragraphs: The opening sentence is the most important sentence of any paragraph. Busy readers focus on opening sentences and sometimes skip over subsequent sentences. Therefore, focus your writing energy on opening sentences. Good opening sentences establish the paragraph’s central point.

Chapter 8: Audience: Serious documentation efforts spend considerable time and energy on defining their audience. These efforts might involve surveys, user experience studies, focus groups, and documentation testing. You probably don’t have that much time, so this unit takes a simpler approach.

Chapter 9: Documents: Scope and non-scope statements benefit not only the reader but also the writer (you). While writing, if the contents of your document veer away from the scope statement (or venture into the non-scope statement), then you must either refocus your document or modify your scope statement. When reviewing your first draft, delete any sections that don’t help satisfy the scope statement.

Chapter 10: Punctuation: This unit provides a quick refresher on punctuation marks like Commas, Semicolon, Em-Dashes and Parentheses

Chapter 11: Markdown: Markdown is a lightweight markup language that many technical professionals use to create and edit technical documents. With Markdown, you write text in a plain text editor (such as vi or Emacs), inserting special characters to create headers, boldface, bullets, and so on.

Chapter 12: Summary: Technical Writing One covered the following basic lessons of technical writing:

• Use terms consistently.
• Avoid ambiguous pronouns.
• Prefer active voice to passive voice.
• Pick specific verbs over vague ones.
• Focus each sentence on a single idea.
• Convert some long sentences to lists.
• Eliminate unneeded words.
• Use a numbered list when ordering is important and a bulleted list when ordering is irrelevant.
• Keep list items parallel.
• Start numbered list items with imperative words.
• Introduce lists and tables appropriately.
• Create great opening sentences that establish a paragraph’s central point.
• Focus each paragraph on a single topic.
• Determine what your audience needs to learn.
• Fit documentation to your audience.
• Establish your document’s key points at the start of the document.

📌 Conclusion

In conclusion, Technical writing is fun and I have gained a lot of experience from it like expressing how my code works or guiding others on how to implement something. Lessons I have learned so far:

• Sometime’s you will feel like you don’t even know how to write or speak English when someone is checking/correcting your work, which is normal so don’t be scared/feel challenged, accept and correct your article.
• You have to be patient when it comes to Technical writing sometime’s, it’s like writing code, one minute your code is working fine, and the next minute everything starts to fall apart, so just take your time.
• Lastly, always use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway app to check your grammatical errors.

According to this popular writer, Curtis Einmann shares:

3 writing tips that have worked for me:

1. Simplify the language.
2. Start with “Why” then “How” then “What”.
3. Value the reader's time more than your own.

“Done is better than perfect, and can gradually perfect what is already done”

Thank you for reading this article. Be sure to clap and recommend this article if you found it helpful and insightful. It means a lot to me.

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