We have been living in 2019 for four months now, so the predictions for this year are over. It’s high time to start analyzing what trends are actually unfolding in the techcomm community worldwide.
New Formats and Platforms in Tech Writing
When a new technology appears, it requires to be documented, of course. A new tech writing niche appears with it as help authoring standards from related fields can be only partially implemented and adjusted to the new technology.
Some of the concepts that keep growing are VR and augmented reality. Yes, these things have been existing for quite some time, and yet they are relatively new playgrounds for technical writers. Becoming a specialist in such promising spheres can turn out to be great investment of time and effort in 2019!
Coding Technical Writers
As you know, the IT industry is one of the main employers of technical writers. The demand for such specialists is high, indeed, but additional requirements often arise.
In the general case, whatever field you pick, you don't need to have a special degree. A lot of technical writers come from the background of journalism, literature, linguistics. However, a degree in the field where you are applying for a job is always appreciated.
If we look at what is going on in IT doc teams today, we will see that the situation is a bit different there. Software documentation can contain code examples that are mostly created by technical writers. Of course, they can ask devs for assistance, but developers are so preoccupied with their own tasks more often than not, so this work process is highly inconvenient.
To sum it up, the demand for technical writers with better knowledge of programming is on the rise, this is a continuous trend.
Hello AI my Old Friend
Let's face it - we are doomed to see AI popping up in all tech-related trends for the years to come. But when will this technology reach the revolutionary point that is expected of it? When will it feel like the future is now and all that? It is hard to tell.
AI-assisted spell-checkers are huge in the industry right now. Tools like Grammarly go beyond spell-checking and use AI to fix grammar, too. Oftentimes, Grammarly can restructure whole sentences for you to make them correct.
But, we are waiting (and dreading!) for the moment when the predictions of machines replacing human technical writers will start coming true. Big players, for example, Google, keep investing in technologies based on machine learning like Smart Compose that can build sentences on their own after consuming enormous amounts of human-written text. So, we can really witness a real breakthrough in the near future.
AI in technical writing seems to be a pretty logical next step since, in many cases, technical documents contain repeatable content. But, anyway, we have to wait for the technology to be improved.
Some trends become something great and potent, others just get stuck in the 'something promising’ stage. Many people blindly follow trends hoping for their career aspirations to come to fruition, alas, here comes the downside of how rapidly technology is happening now - new things come to our lives daily, and trends can be forgotten as quickly as they appear.
What we really want to say here is - learning new trends is vital to stay relevant in your profession, but don't forget about the grain of salt to take it with.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices