People believe technical writing to be gobbledygook when it is, in fact, supposed to be easy to understand…
The mention of the phrase “technical writing”, unfortunately, makes many novice entrepreneurs and content writers nervous. The reason for this is simply the kind of reputation that technical writing has developed over the years. As the best way to conquer difficulty and apprehension is by understanding the subject matter better, here, we will attempt to explain technical writing.
Defining Technical Writing
The simplest of definitions of technical writing would be the conveying of a particular set of information or concepts to a particular type of audience or people for a particular purpose or goal. In order to understand the concept of technical content writing properly, you should imagine archery or dart target boards.
- The outside ring of the target is writing where content is not specific, the audience is not particular and even the purpose is not clearly defined. Some elitist technical writing experts would, debatably, choose undefined and untargeted blogs as an example of the outer ring.
- The ring inside the outermost ring can be seen as writing that has one of content, audience and purpose categorically specified.
- The ring after this one would have two aspects specialized and so on till the bull’s eye has been achieved.
In effect, technical writing is specialized writing or writing with a defined and undeniable purpose in mind. The reason why technical writing makes content writers apprehensive is the kind of effort it requires and the online entrepreneurs because of the kind of investment it requires.
Technical Writing, Content Writers and Online Entrepreneurs
However, if the content writer knew how to go about technical writing then he would not feel so skeptical about taking on technical writing projects. Similarly, if an online entrepreneur knew the kind of effort that went into technical writing and the quality of the end product, he would shy away from investing the required sums. Therefore, whether you are an online entrepreneur or a content writer, the following concepts pertaining to technical writing should be of help to you.
The True Process of Writing behind Technical Writing
Whenever a book or a research paper is written, the author creates a first draft which is then, at the very least, revised once to create a revised draft and edited in the end to come to a final draft. While the majority of technical writing is not as long as a book or even a research paper, it still needs to be written in the aforementioned way.
The foundation of technical writing is planning. A technical content writer starts out on a new project by first understanding the true purpose of the piece of writing that he is attempting to create. This requires a lot of diligence and effort targeted towards delving into the objective of the piece of writing. Thus, it is very common for technical writers to request either a face to face meeting with their clients or, at the very least, an elaborate written interview.
Once the technical content writer has understood the purpose of the assignment, he then moves towards gathering relevant and potent information for it. This means going through existing documentation and consulting experts of the subject that he is working on.
It is only after these two steps that a technical writer starts writing the required content. Needless to say, the writing of the content is done with the target audience and the objective of the project firmly in mind so that the information is conveyed properly. It is also not rare to see technical writing being made as simple as possible by way of avoiding industry specific jargon, using simpler syntax of language, writing everything in active voice and, basically, tailoring the piece of content as simply as possible.
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