Posts Tagged ‘Technical Writing’

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technique: Split long sentences into shorter and simpler ones Here is a sure-fire method to split your long sentences into shorter and more easily understandable ones: Split your sentences at conjunctions like “and”, “or”, “while”, “however”, “although” etc. Those are the connection points where one clause is linked to another. By…

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing has to be clear, linear, and logical. Technique:  Write in simple sentences that anybody can understand Avoid compound sentences with multiple clauses. Here is the most basic sentence structure in English: SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT If a sentence does not have this structure, try to rearrange the components…

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing needs to be correct, before anything else. This is the MOST IMPORTANT sine qua non condition of all technical writing. If a technical document is incorrect, it’s value is zero, nil, zilch. The rest doesn’t matter. Incorrect technical writing creates confusion, misinformation, and even dangerous mistakes and disasters. Technique…

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing fails when it tries to become “fine writing” or “creative writing.” Why? Because one of the main tools of “fine writing” is attributing human-like qualities to non-human actors and agents. That’s a definite taboo in technical documentation. (“Anthropomorphizing” is the $100-word that says the same thing.) For example you…

Technical writing needs to be objective. It should describe objects the properties of which we can measure quantitatively. COROLLARY: When different people read a technical description, they should be able to perform identical tasks and obtain identical results. And for that to happen, the words you use must not be open to wide-raging interpretations. One…