How to Find a Technical Writing Job – Some Ideas and Resources
Finding a job as a technical writer is always in our minds, isn’t it? Especially those who are new to the field, even if they have years of writing experience behind them, are always wondering the correct way to find a technical writing job.The short answer is — there is NO single correct way to…
Read MoreBOOK REVIEW: “Design for How People Learn” by Julie Dirksen
“Design for How People Learn” by Julie Dirksen is a “heavy” book, both literally (top-quality paper) and figuratively. It’s an important reference work that I think all trainers, instructors, and e-learning designers should read. We are lucky to have today e-learning tools like Adobe Captivate and others. Setting up slides, quizzes, links, buttons, voiceovers, inserting images,…
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What Are the Qualities of a Good Technical Writer?
Introduction The qualities of a good technical writer make a long list but here we’ll focus on a selected few including love for accuracy, the ability to play as a part of a team, and an endless thirst for new technical knowledge. A technical writer is someone who writes technical documentation such as user guides,…
Read MoreBe Careful with Humor in Technical Writing
Humor is great. I love it. Once upon a time I used to write jokes for comedian Joan Rivers as a freelance contributor. Making people laugh is a skill that I respect and truly love. However, when you are writing a technical document or book, you should be very careful before injecting humor into your…
Read More2 Methods to Avoid Gender Ambiguity
One of the hardest things in writing English is to avoid using the third person singular pronouns, unless you are writing for an exclusively male or female group. Every time I see a document with a sentence like “the operator must configure his or her machine according to…” I cringe. Some writers switch back and…
Read MoreHow to Write in “Action Units” in Technical Writing
An “action unit” in technical writing is a series of consequences arising from the same single action. For example, if you drop an apple, it will fall, perhaps roll on the ground and then come to a rest. All of that constitutes a single “action unit.” In a software context, if you click a command…
Read More"How can I get a job as a Technical Writer?"
© Ugur Akinci You can get a job as a technical writer in one the three ways: Work on your own as a freelancer. Work for a job agency or staffing agency as an independent contractor. Work on the payroll as a part- or full-time writer of a company/corporation. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.…
Read More3 Ways To Create Documentation Color Scheme
As much as we would like not to trouble ourselves with inventing a documentation design – there’s no avoiding it. Your documentation is what represents you to your users, so it better look decent. You do not necessarily need a designer to fulfil this particular task. In this post, we are going to show you…
Read More4 Questions When Entering Job Market
A reader who has just received his Bachelor’s degree (congrats!) sent the following letter the other day:“I would like to break into the technical writing/communication field, though I have some questions: 1) What should I have as an entry level technical writer? That is, what should my portfolio contain? 2) What are some alternate job titles for…
Read MoreHazards of Poorly Written Technical Documentation
© Ugur Akinci I don’t like to whine and be negative in general. Life is too short to go around fuming about things that we can’t change. However, there are times when we all need to be critical in order to improve things; especially if they fall within our area of expertise. The other day…
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