How can I Improve as a Technical Writer
Published in
4 min readApr 5, 2019
In this post, I want to categorize some articles of mine that will be useful for your career growth and help you improve yourself as a technical writer.
Writing Skills
- Tips on Improving Technical Writing
To write clearly is the main goal of technical writers. Here are some pieces of advice that will improve your technical writing skills and your documentation, and, as a result, people will read it from cover to cover. - Style Guides for Technical Writers
In order to write documentation in a more clear way and keep a consistent tone, voice, and style in your documentation, read and follow one of the style guides. - Using Humor in Technical Documentation
In this article, you’ll find practical tips on humor in technical documentation, whether it’s appropriate or not, and how to make your documentation more user-friendly. - Grammar Books for Technical Writers
Grammar is an essential part of writing, especially, of technical writing — documentation should be clear and grammatically correct. To be sure that you’ve written everything right, upgrade your skills. Here is a list of great books on grammar and punctuation. - Technical Writing Podcasts
Nowadays, podcasts are very popular because they provide us with great opportunities to upgrade our skills while doing something else — on the way to work, while waiting in a line or wherever you want. So, you have not to take courses and attend them after office hours when you’re tired and not motivated to learn new things. That’s why I gathered some podcasts that definitely help you improve your skills in technical writing. - Top 7 Online Courses in Technical Writing
Nowadays it’s not necessary to head to university to get domain knowledge because there are many online courses on the Internet. Technical writing isn’t an exception. I examined many online courses and created a list with top 7 online courses and added descriptions for each of them. - Top 7 books for Technical Writers
Many people ask me what books about technical writing I may recommend. I think that only practice can help you to upgrade your skills but books may serve as a basis for further development. So I’ve compiled a list of useful books and accompanied each item with a description.
Visual Content in Documentation
- Effective Image Alt Text in Technical Writing
In the article called Technical Documentation for Visually Impaired, ClickHelp mentioned that alt attribute is essential in technical documentation, and technical writers should pay more attention to it. Let’s try and figure out how you can improve your documentation by adding image alt text. - Screenshots in Documentation
In order to make your documentation easy-to-interpret, you should not only write clearly but also add visual content such as photos (if you write an instruction) or screenshots. This is a difficult task — you have to add the right pictures in the right way. I will talk about the size of screenshots, design and their place in your documentation. - Diagrams in Documentation (Markdown Guide)
Technical writing is not only about texts — it also requires visual content, for example, graphics. However, not all technical writers can draw well, or it can take many hours to draw graphics manually by using a graphics editor. I want to make your life easier, so I’ve gathered some resources that allow you to create graphics by using code. - Photos in Technical Documentation
Visual content makes readers’ life easier — they don’t have to reread a text several times to understand what a tech writer wanted to say, pictures and videos make things clear and simple. How to make professional photos if you have not made such content before (I’m not speaking about photos of avocados and selfies)? Well, I’ll tell you some lifehacks that help you upgrade your skills.
Tools that You Can Use to Make Writing Process More Effective
- Software Tools for Technical Writing
In this post you’ll find a list of the most popular technical writing tools. It’s based on the G2 Crowd score that’s formed by customer satisfaction. - Vector Graphics/Drawing Tools in Technical Writing
Technical documentation is more readable when it features graphics, diagrams, and images. However, it may sound confusing for tech writers, especially, for novices because they think that this task is for designers who can use necessary tools. What if I say that you (a technical writer) also can draw graphics and images for your documentation, and you don’t need special skills. You may ask “How?” And my answer is an intuitive tool. Interested? Here is a list of tools that help you create visual content easily. - Tools For Creating Visual Content
There are many tools for creating infographics, screenshots, and videos. To simplify your searching for a good tool for working on visual content, I’ve decided to create a list of helpful sources that I use. - Markdown in Technical Writing
In my post called Diagrams in Documentation (Markdown Guide) I told how to create diagrams using Markdown. However, do you really need to use Markdown for technical writing? Let’s figure out.
