Posted by admin on June 7, 2007 under Technical Writer | 
Technical writing as a field covers a variety of different skills and positions. Many people, when they think of technical writers, think of user guides and installation instructions. That is certainly one area a technical writer might work in, but it is far from the only area. Some technical writers spend much more time working with reference materials, which can take the form of long documents filled with technical information but with little in the way of instructional content. Some technical writers spend their time creating online help files for people who need help navigating a particular application. Other technical writers rarely work on new information at all; they spend their time updating old manuals, files or datasheets. Many technical writers work on a large team focused on creating a single document or platform of documents. Other technical writers find themselves in charge of every single technical document an organization releases. A technical writer may create a single sheet of information or a thousand page book. Their work may be concentrated in print or online. The occupation is very diverse.
A technical writer’s primary job goal is to present specialized information to an audience. There are several important steps to the process, however, an individual writer may not be a part of all of these steps. These are the steps required to create useful documentation:
- Analyze the information or data
- Determine the audience’s needs
- Determine the documents required to meet the audience’s needs
- Design the documents and present the information or instructions
- Test the documentation to determine if it meets the needs of the audience
- Edit the documentation
- Publish the documentation
- Revise the documentation as necessary throughout the lifecycle of the project
Often, a writer finds that they are working on only one or two segments within the documentation path. A writer may take a job in which they work primarily as a document editor, or they find work revising existing documentation. This can lead to different job titles. A person may spend the majority of their time performing audience analysis and acquire a title as a usability designer or an information architect. The person who primarily edits/revises documents might be called a documentation editor or technical editor. A skilled technical writer, however, must be prepared to execute the entire documentation process.
What a Technical Writer Writes
The range of writing a technical writer performs covers a wide range of projects. You may find yourself a part of one large project, or overseeing dozens of smaller projects. You might write wen help, manuals, articles, proposals, white papers, product descriptions or any of a hundred other types of documents. Common documents types include:
Instructional Guides
Instructional guides come in a wide variety of types such as: user manuals, user guides, handbooks, how-to guides, set-up guides and quick start guides. Instructional manuals can be as short as a single page or longer than a thousand pages. The purpose of an instructional guide is to teach a user how to perform a task or a set of tasks. A single project can generate several instructional manuals. For example, a new relational database program may come with quick-start sheet, a user’s manual, an administrator’s guide and a programmer’s handbook. All of these are very different documents, but they all come under the heading of instructional guide.
Informational Material
Informational material also covers a wide number of documents such as reference books, datasheets, application notes, FAQs (Frequently asked questions), white papers and process analysis. The purpose of these documents is to provide information more than instruction. The previously mentioned relational database program might include a reference book that lists the database commands and what they are used for. It may also include a datasheet that lists the application size, available platforms, limitations and known conflicts/issues.
Business Communications
Businesses communications are not necessarily technical communications, but a large segment of technical writing is deeply involved with business communications. These communications take the form of proposals, service level agreements (SLAs) and standard operating procedures (SOPs). For example, a business may want to use an outside vendor to provide call center services for their new product. The first document they would create is a request for proposals (RFP) that describes what services they need and invites other companies (vendors) to submit a proposal. Prospective vendors will then submit proposals. These proposals are both a sales tool and a technical document that provides details about how the vendor intends to provide the service. Once a vendor has been chosen, they must contractually agree to the provision and division of services. This agreement is an SLA. It describes what each company is responsible for providing and maintaining.
SOPs are much like instructional guides because they define how to perform a task, but in business they are generally more restrictive. That is because an SOP may be binding. In other words, if an employee fails to follow an SOP
