Technical Writing Blog

An API without a good user manual is next to useless. Developers would like a clear view of an API, code examples, detailed explanation of calls and parameters. And, they are not the only people visiting an API documentation portal. Many people with different roles are involved in API nowadays as this sphere has gained…

What is a perfect help topic? It is a topic that delivers a solution to its readers in the most efficient manner. Creating such topics means paying attention to their every element and analyzing them. Further, you will find practical advice on improving each help topic element to create great technical documentation. Title It all…

Metrics are the easiest way for managers to analyze work processes, make conclusions and see whether everything is going according to plan. If it is not, some changes need to take place. Metrics also help controlling employee performance and efficiency of the current processes. Technical writing requires metrics just like any part of product development….

We have written a lot of articles in this blog about self-development for technical writing specialists, given tips on writing user manuals, shared best practices of applying for a job as a technical writer. But one of the main topics of interest is yet to be covered – salaries in technical writing. Salary rates change…

Technical writing is a global notion. Technical documentation is written or localized all over the world in so many different spheres. Just imagine how many technical terms there are. Even if you have been a technical writer for a long time, working in one industry, it doesn’t mean that you know all the terminology of…

Creating user manuals is a difficult task on its own. Making them good is even more difficult. If while reading these first two sentences you thought to yourself, ‘Well, my technical documentation is quite good, actually’ – you might be missing an important point here: there is always room for improvement. Stagnation inevitably leads to…

What’s more important for a technical writer – language or technical skills? This question keeps coming up in techcomm discussions. It is partly rooted in the fact that technical writing as an industry is all over the place. There are user manuals on basically everything starting from kids’ toys and ending up with rocket science…

Technical writing becomes more and more popular as technology develops fast. More people are getting interested in this sphere, and some of them want to retrain to get this job. However, people don’t know where to start and what skills they need. That’s why, we asked Kesi Parker to share her story. She had been…

Being able to single-source technical documentation is arguably the main perk of modern technical writing tools. ClickHelp is among those help authoring tools that offer their clients various ways to single-source content. Single sourcing means that the same documentation project can be used to create different outputs and versions. So, you won’t need to have,…

Do people read technical documentation? This question has always been kind of looming over technical writing. And, this year, it became known to a much larger audience. Last Thursday, on September 13, 2018, the annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place in Harvard. And, not surprisingly (we will talk about why we believe it’s not…