Technical Writing Part Three: A Technical Writer’s Skill Set
December 30, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
Becoming a technical writer involves the mastery of a set of skills. A carpenter must master hammering, drilling and sawing. A technical writer must master writing, technology, tools and other skills.
Writing Skills
The first skill a technical writer should have, of course, is writing. You should be able to write in a clear, concise manner. Technical writing is not poetry or prose. Depending on where you work, you may or may not be able to add some stylistic flair. Either way, your job is to clearly tell your audience exactly what they need to know, and everything they need to know.
Technical Skills
The second skill you should have is knowledge of a technical subject. My emphasis has always been in the field of computers, which is probably the largest segment of the technical writing market. Your knowledge can be in many other areas, however, such as science, medicine, engineering, mechanics, or law.
Tools Skills
No matter what your area of knowledge, you will need tool/computer skills, especially desktop publishing skills. At minimum, you should know the Microsoft Office suite of applications, especially Microsoft Word. Beyond Office, there is Adobe FrameMaker, which is used in many technical-writing environments. Other publishing packages such as PageMaker, Quark Express, and Interleaf can also be useful. In addition, online documentation tools such as RoboHelp, Doc-to-Help and Lotus Notes are great applications to have on your resume, as are HTML and other Internet skills.
Other Skills
You should try to develop interviewing skills, because you will probably find yourself interviewing technical people to get the information you need for your documents. Often, they will have no idea how to tell you what you need to know, so it is up to you to figure out how to draw the information out of them.
Visual design is another key tool for document development. Technical documents are not composed of just text; they contain graphics such as tables, icons, visual aids, schematics, graphs and charts. Knowing how to work with these visual tools is a key to creating a quality user experience.
Usability and testing skills are also valuable to a technical writer. It is important to learn how to test documentation to make it better. Learning the basics of usability testing will aid you when it comes time to test your own work and to incorporate the results of those tests.
We often work with writers who have technical competency in their fields but have a difficult time expressing their knowledge. Clear writing, easy-to-understand but content-rich, is hard to produce, which is why editorial services exist.
Each of the topics you describe entails a separate skill set, but “writing skills” and “other skills” are, perhaps, the most difficult to master, as they require both technical skills and strong personal skills.
Thanks for sharing this overview!
–David Bowman, Owner
Precise Edit
http://preciseedit.com
“We often work with writers who have technical competency in their fields but have a difficult time expressing their knowledge.”
David, I guess that the writers are technical people without specialist technical writing skills. In any given field, all professional technical writers should have the ability to write clearly, even when the subject matter is complex. If they cannot do that, they should not be technical writers.
I’m operating the aerospace and engineering fields where knowledge of SGML and the ability to apply specific standards is very important for all of our projects.
I expect there are standards to be followed for most industries.
You have enclosed this big topic in such a small post very beautifully. I recently started my own tech blog. I never had any tech skill related to HTML or any website modification but now I can do it .
As one of the readers, I could say that I have read a lot of articles from the technical writers which make me believe and agree with you, that once you become a writer, you need to acquire first those set of skills and consider also the successful writers as inspirations in doing that craft.