Technical Writing Blog

If you think of it, dozens or even hundreds of criteria can be used to determine the quality of technical documentation. This blog is actually more than us listing some criteria, this is an exhaustive guide you can follow to find areas of improvement. We will look at this subject from two perspectives – from…

Don’t be cruel to your user manuals. Treat them well and your efforts will pay off. Happy customers will be the currency! Not Taking Mobile Readers Into Account The share of mobile traffic for 2019 was more than 50%. That says something. Technical documentation is perhaps not the resource with the highest mobile traffic numbers,…

We hear the term “topic-based authoring” quite a lot. ClickHelp is software for help writers that supports the topic-based approach. But how did it come to be? What makes topic-based authoring superior in modern techcomm? And, finally, how is it different from modular help writing? Let’s try figuring this out. Predecessor of Topic-Based Authoring For…

One of various things technical writers can do is compose questionnaires and write interview questions. Users are the perfect candidates for being interviewed! Goals of these interviews can vary, we will talk about that in a moment. For now, we would like to point out that users can be your best advocates and they have…

Our previous post was addressed to problems with technical documentation. So, we set up a poll on our Telegram Channel. According to it, technical writers’ biggest concern is that people don’t read documentation. Imagine how frustrating this is – all the work you put in just to learn it was pointless. This sounds demotivating. Let’s…

There are certain issues that are very common for technical documentation teams all over the world. We will not only name them in this blog post but will also provide comprehensive solutions. Let’s begin. You Don’t Have a User Manual Or, rather, you wouldn’t call what you have a user manual. This is easily the…

Technical documentation is very complicated as it is. Don’t let your readers get lost in it! Give them a helping hand – navigation. Ideally, readers don’t need to be conscious of navigation elements they use. Moving between help topics should feel intuitive and seamless. This can be achieved if you have the right toolset at…

Why do we recommend using visual elements in technical documentation? Well, the answer is simple – the human brain is very good at distinguishing colors and understanding patterns. So, when you add maps, graphs, charts, infographics, dashboards, etc. to text, you are doing a big favor to readers and yourself. Using visualization techniques as a…

Sometimes, we get so used to looking at things from a certain perspective that it is getting increasingly harder to see how it may look for others. For instance, no matter how important it is for technical writers to think like readers to deliver better user manuals, it can be a tough call. Let’s shift…

Marketing is viewed as a separate field in business. Marketing teams are responsible for attracting potential clients and taking action to persuade them that the product holds the solution they were looking for. However, a lot of factors influence this process, and often they are out of the marketing team’s scope. Let’s take a technical…