Technical Writing Two
by Parker · 10 things on Twos
- Write in the second person. Refer to your audience as "you" rather than "we"
- Place conditional clauses before an instruction, rather than after
- Think of your audience, read your draft from their point of view, provide definitions for any terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to your reads
- Read it out loud to check if your writing is conversational
- Introduce the document with what the document covers. what prior knowledge you expect readers to have, and what your document doesn't cover
- Write the caption for an illustration first
- Strategy for creating a good second draft: reorganize into headers and paragraphs, revise to improve the words
- Header examples: introduction, prerequiste knowledge, background concepts, example, ...
- Paragraph examples: This document introduces..., You must know how to... prior to reading this document
- When writing an example, use action verbs to discuss a task followed bycode examples