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Technical Writing-- It's a Lot Faster with Technology
By Bill Yarberry
I make a comfortable living writing technical stuff--
everything from telecom books to hefty computer manuals. Since I’m unabashedly
fond of making money, I prowl the bookstores looking for the magic bullet-- a
book that pulls all the writing technologies together. However, like Godot, I’m
still waiting. There are tomes covering Word, Photoshop, and the other common
desktop software. In another section of the bookstore are heaps of writing
books ranging from The Chicago Manual of Style to Eats, Shoots &
Leaves. What is missing (won’t someone please write it?!) is a practical
guide to writing technical material quickly, efficiently, and with flair.
Technical writing’s bottom line is quality and speed.
Quality keeps you employed; speed increases your income. What we need is a book
that outlines all the small, cumulative, and practical means of production-- one
that crosses the boundaries of software, hardware, ergonomics, psychology, and
business. Until that book gets written, here’s some writing catalysts that
have helped me increase production by about 100% over the last five years:
 | Use the ultra simple graphics tool Snagit to grab
pictures, format them, and load your document with illustrations. It has a
ten minute learning curve. |
| Learn MS Word’s styles, then create your own. It is
unwise to write a large technical document without using styles. |
| Install the Google desk bar. Stationed at the bottom
of your screen, it serves as an uber-quick dictionary and thesaurus.
Seconds matter. |
| Learn the Mind Map technique (Tony Buzan). Graphical
methods reduce start up time. |
| Buy at least one set of quality fonts. Times Roman is
boring and reeks of amateur. Adobe’s type basic collection is a good
start. |
| Include a table of contents (another reason to use
styles) and an index in large documents. Save time with a concordance file
in Word rather than the tedious one-by-one technique. |
| Read The Chicago Manual of Style cover to
cover. Boring? Yes. Valuable? Extremely. |
| Use X1 search engine to find stuff on your hard
drive. If you live long enough, your hard drive will become more valuable
than you are. Buy the biggest one you can afford and keep everything on
it. |
| Footnote all generic acronyms using Google’s desk bar
dictionary (for those who love the keyboard, that’s “Control – D.”)
Technical people cannot keep up with their own acronyms. State the obvious
and footnote TLAs (three letter acronyms). Give credit for the definition
but include it. |
| When you are finished, go to Kinko’s and have your
manuscript spiral bound. It is a nice touch and looks more professional
than standard GBC or (ugh) a three ring binder. |
| Be on the hunt for graphical styles in magazines.
Your clients may be in staid businesses and may rarely ask for color or
graphics. But believe me-- they like it. Business and technical manuals
are so often boring that you can achieve note by simple cosmetics.
|
| Eschew stilted text. Use of the word “shall” is a
neon light suggesting “boring writer works here.” |
| You can use illustrations without permission if the
source material is old enough-- most stuff published in the 1700’s and
1800’s is in the public domain. Use judgment. |
| Don’t hesitate to use filler. Sometimes clients want
fat manuals. Again, such desire is not explicitly communicated. Politics
may require that the guy paying your fee has a manual designed to impresses
his boss. Websites, further reading material, and graphical appendices make
excellent page extenders. |
| Use Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. As a young
writer, I was sometimes astounded at the range and sagacity of some magazine
authors. Then I realized that they simply chose a topic, looked up the
appropriate quote, and skillfully weaved the reference into the narrative.
It’s actually okay to use a little literary stuff in technical writing. I
started many of the chapters of my book, Computer Telephony Integration,
with a relevant quote. |
| Become a desktop software expert. When you get
writer’s block, use the time to learn Visio, Word, Excel, and at least one
graphics package. Don’t wait until you need the knowledge-- brains don’t
work that way. |
You’ll notice that my list above is haphazard. No single
suggestion serves as the silver bullet of writing productivity. And maybe
that’s why I can’t find my productivity guide in the bookstore. Good, fast
writing comes from experience and the use of many small tools across multiple
disciplines. For now at least, you’ll have to build your own toolkit-- but it’s
well worth the effort.
Bill Yarberry, CPA, is the author of Computer
Telephony Integration and co-author of Telecommunications Cost Management.
He has written more than a dozen technical articles on topics ranging from
internal audit, telecommunications and technical communications. As an internal
audit and Sarbanes-Oxley consultant, he writes technical manuals and procedures
for firms across the US. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of
Tennessee and lives in Houston, Texas with his wife and two children. Comments
are welcome (wayarberry@yahoo.com).
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