Technical writing is simplifing complex task, suitation or tool
in simple consise, easy to understand form. Technical writing is an
art to delivering technical information to technical or
non-technical users in a simple and easy to understandable
form.
Technical Writing is done for a purpose.
Technical writing is creating documents that help someone
install, uninstall,
configure or use a product or a tool or a service. It results in
the creation of things such as user manuals, admin guides,
instruction booklets and help systems, installation manual, but it
just not restricted to this you can also write brochure, PowerPoint
slides, etc.
A technical writer is a person who develops the technical
documents. Various organizations assigns different titles to
technical writers, such as document developer, instructional
designer, or technical content writer. There is no specific
education required for a person to be a technical writer. However,
the minimum requirement to be a technical writer is graduation in
any stream. You don't need to have any technical degree in your
hand to be a technical writer. However, many organizations,
especially software organizations seeks technical writers with
degrees, such as BCA, MCA, BE, and B.Tech. The basic skills that a
technical writer should have are:
• Writing Ability: It is not required for a technical writer be
an expert in any technology but a technical writer must have flair
of writing simple, customized, concise, and error less documents. A
technical writer must be grammatically well sound. If you are not
grammatically sound then you cannot be a successful technical
writer. A technical writer must have ability to write on diverse
topics.
• Analytical Nature: A technical writer must have the capability
to analysis the given content and to create good technical
documents on that analysis.
• Information Gathering: Information gathering skills of a
technical writer makes him/her successful in his/her the field of
technical writing. If you have flair of writing but don't have the
capability to gather the relevant information for a technical
document then you are a waste for an organization. Technical
writing revolves around the information gathering. A technical
writer can gather information from various sources, such as
internet, books, and pre-written documents. Whatever be the source
you use to gather the information, be ensure that the gathered
information must be useful. A technical writer may need to
interview Subject Matter Expert (SME) to gather information. It is
not an easy task to collect the relevant information from a SME
because a SME is a very busy person and might not give you the
sufficient time to grab the information. Therefore, you must have
the impressive communication skills to interview the SME and gather
as much as the information you can from SME, in a short period of
time.
• Quick Learning and Adaptive Capability: A technical writer
must be a quick learner and have capability to grab the new
concepts in a short period. With the growth of economy, various new
products are being launched in the market. Before creating any
document related to those products, a technical writer must have to
learn them and grab their concepts. Therefore, quick learning
becomes a vital requirement for a technical writer
