Technical Writing Tips

Yesterday, I attended a technical writing event hosted by I4G Unilag Chapter, where speakers shared more about how one can get started or improve their technical writing skills, and I thought I could share it here as it could be of help to one or two who might be reading through this article.

The first guest was Joel Adewole, who is a Fulstsack developer(Python and Javascript) at Tunga and a technical writer who covered everything technical writing

Understanding the Nitty-Gritty of Technical Writing

Technical writing is the process of creating and managing written content about a particular subject that requires guidance, instruction, explanation, or analysis for readers to relate to or interact well with the subject. One doesn't have to be a coder, data scientist, designer, or tech specialist to be a technical writer.

Types of technical writing

A technical writer can focus on writing either:

Software/end-user documentation
QA solutions
how-to guides and tutorials
business proposals
Project requirement documents
research papers & reports
white papers
product recall
resumes

Why Technical Writing

Essentials of Technical Writing. One can focus on technical writing for:

providing content for others to fall back to in the future
providing various opinions on certain subjects
essentially making information circulate
Companies that need it to promote their products
Business to show analysis to stakeholders

Benefits of technical writing

For the audience, they can benefit from content that:

gives a how-to guide that provides clear directives on how to use the subject, for example, tutorials on how to deploy on Heroku.
serves as a point of reference to the subject

For writers, Technical writers benefit from technical writing as it helps them:-

improve research skills, i.e, while writing articles, one might have content, but they'll still have to research additional information and link relevant information that might benefit the target audience.
master better communication, i.e, as a technical writer, most often you'll but conscious of potential readers, tenses of speech, or even Grammarly
create a professional presentation, i.e, most technical writers can share their work on their social profiles or even add to their resume or portfolio
creates connections, i.e, as you grow as a technical writer, you get to connect with other technical writers, your readers who might leave a comment or relate to your content, or potential clients who might want to work with you because of your skill

Demystify & overcome difficulties of technical writing

Is technical writing difficult? No, writing something up it’s a skill. Write particular language and skills that match what you know. Here are some things that make people scared of getting started with technical writing, and ways they can overcome them while writing:

grammar: use grammar tools, eg, Grammarly, Hemingway
Plagiarism: Use plagiarism checkers
Insufficient information: research the subject
Misinformation: test the content well
Audience boredom: write engagement content
Low engagement: improve SEO

Start your path toward becoming a master technical writer

const learnToWrite = () => {
    read()
    write()
    get_feedback_from_people()
    return LearnToWrite()
}

Prerequisites for becoming a technical writer

good communication skills
understand the subject you write about
ability to research & learn new concepts

Start your technical writing journey

Join technical writing communities
Read a variety of technical writing write-ups
Sign up for public blogs, e.g, hashnode, dev.to, medium
create a personal bog(optional)
Make use of professional writing tools
explore different writing styles, e.g, markdown
pitch to paid writing blogs

Protips for technical writing

Start with an outline
Discover your writing styles & stick to it...markdown, rich-text, memes, etc
make use of infographics/visual aids, e.g, tables, graphs, charts
Use interactive quote snippets, e.g, codesandbox, codepen, jsfiddle, Github, Gists, markdown
Include reference links
Use the grammar tools Grammarly, Hemingway to correct your grammar
Use SEO tools to optimize your content to better search engine ranking, like Yoast

The second speaker was Olamide Makinde: content & technical writer, SheCodeAfrica lead, who had an AMA session. Before getting into technical writing, she had experience writing non-tech content, then started writing various concepts for SheCodeAfrica and volunteering before pitching for paid writing opportunities.

Mostly she wanted things to be perfect, but wasn't sure when she wanted to write in public, how people would react if it wasn't good. In the long run, she has learned to write in public to get feedback and build her skills
Being a good writer: volunteer writing has been helpful, together with consistency. Unlike developers and designers, technical writers are viewed as "small" in the space, but meeting other people in technical writing communities has been encouraging to her.
Rejection emails: while pitching in technical writing, paid to blog, or guest writing, she got a lot of rejections, even when talking with other writers, they had experienced the same, but they didn't stop trying. Just keep applying and waiting for feedback or time, and they’ll accept you.
Write: there’s no rush or limit in writing
Having an accountability partner rather than a mentor to keep you accountable or help read your content if they're in the same field as you.
The fear that many people have written this topic before shouldn't stop you from writing on the said topic.
Why write the article: people know this concept, save time, know your worth/target audience

Paid Technical Writing Opportunities

If you have mastered the technical writing skills, you can pitch on these various sites:

Thank you for reading this article. I hope it will help you with a few hints on how to improve your technical writing skills. You can leave a comment or suggestion in the comments section.