My 7 Commandments of Technical Writing
Ever felt like writing a tech blog? Yeah me too. My problem was, I never really knew how to go about it. As far as I was concerned, tech bloggers were like J.K Rowling. They made magic by writing about magic. It was a little intimidating I admit, nevertheless, I was determined. Going through a couple of tech articles(courtesy of medium), I discovered some set of rules which were recurring in most of them. I refer to them as the 7 commandments of technical writing and will break them down in a bit but first, understand that
“IT DOES NOT MATTER IF ANYONE ELSE HAS WRITTEN ON THAT TOPIC. JUST AS YOUR CODING STYLE IS UNIQUE TO YOU, YOUR LITERARY STYLE IS ALSO A ONE OF ITS KIND. NO ONE ELSE CAN SELL YOUR IDEAS BETTER THAN YOU. SO SPEAK FREELY AND OPENLY.”
Rule 1: DON'T SPEAK UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE TO SAY
Quincy Larson referred to this as “substance”. In his words "When you have something to say, that’s when you open your mouth and say it." and I agree with him to be honest. It does not matter if you can cough up a thousand words per paragraph, if you are not saying anything important, no one will pay attention.
RULE 2: IF YOUR HEADLINE ISN’T GREAT, YOUR ARTICLE ISN’T GREAT
The sooner you understand that, the better. No matter how brilliant your work, no one will bother to click unless they are sold by the headline. The internet is full posts and blogs from folks who think they have something to say. According to getcodeless.com, over 2 million blog posts were published daily in 2017 and those numbers are still going up. If you want your posts to matter, your headline has to sell the whole post.
RULE 3: DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE PICTURES AND GIFS
They are almost as important as the headline. On platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Medium, the feature image gives attraction points to your posts(the better the image, the more hits you get). You can use pictures or gifs to clarify ideas in posts or add comic relief. Whether it’s the former or the latter or both, choosing the right image will add colour to your blog and increase the chances of being discovered. Remember this. If humans were like fish, then pictures are perfect for bait.
RULE 4: WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
Ever heard of WRITER’S BLOCK? Obey this rule and you won’t ever have one. Google defines it as "the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing". From personal experience, this is not fun! In order to prevent this, stick to a field you are good at or make sure you have done a lot of research before starting to write.
RULE 5: ALWAYS CREDIT YOUR SOURCES
This is important if you want to avoid copyright infringement. This applies to images, infographic sources and other articles. If you are not sure of your source, you can use creative commons(open source works). Some sites for creative commons are creativecommons.org, archive.org, wikimedia commons, DeviantArt.com, Flickr, IntraText.com, Revver.com among others.
RULE 6: CHANGE FONT STYLES AND FORMATS WHERE NEEDED
This aids readability. For example, use bold formats when you want to emphasize a point(Except links. These are underlined already). Please folks, using more than one exclamation point will not accomplish anything. Semicolons are old school, use your commas and for the love of english, avoid using ancient latin phrases like "etc, I.E, N.B and E.G". Use words and phrases like "for example, note that and that is".
RULE 7: FIND YOUR READERS. DON'T WAIT FOR THEM TO FIND YOU
So you finally made that awesome post, now you can sit back and let the accolades roll in right? Nope! Your work is not done yet. You still have to make sure your readers can see your posts. You can use hashtags and post the links on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter.
Okay guys,
Let's do a recap with some bullets:
- If you don't have anything important to say, don't say anything.
- If your headline sucks, your article sucks.
- Don't be afraid to use pictures and gifs.
- If you can't prove it, don't write it.
- Always credit your sources.
- Change formats and font styles where necessary.
- Publicise your work.
If you made it this far, I hope you are satisfied, ready and eager to begin your creative work out. You guys are awesome. I can’t wait to see the great articles you conjure up. Thanks for reading and happy blogging.
Checkout Developer Student-Club-Uniben publication page on Medium for more interesting articles like this.
