The Five-Step Technical Writing Process.
The simple, five-step process that can be used to create almost any piece of technical documentation such as a user guide, manual or procedure.
For aspiring technical writers and students of technical writing, non-writers who find themselves assigned with the task of creating technical documentation, established writers who want to bring more structure to their work, and anyone managing a documentation project.
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How You Can Benefit
The Technical Writing Process Book
A lot of technical books focus on the writing aspect of technical writing. But, as any experienced technical writer will tell you, writing is only part of the picture. Four of the five steps in the Technical Writing Process focus on other things, like planning, structuring, reviewing, and publishing your work. This is the missing ingredient – the project management aspect of technical writing that often gets overlooked.
Plan
"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." This chapter covers the planning activities you need to carry out to set up your documentation project for success, such as defining scope, customising the Technical Writing Process to suit your project, scheduling, tracking progress, and creating a Documentation Plan.
Structure
The table of contents is the backbone of your document, providing a structure or "information architecture" for you to populate with text. This chapter covers the four main approaches to structuring technical documentation (narrative, process-based, library, and system-based) and how to work with stakeholders to develop it.
Write
Writing is where you convert your bare-bones table of contents into a series of drafts. This chapter covers writing methods such as active voice and Plain English; reviewing with subject matter experts; managing the review process with version control; and techniques on layout and formatting. There's even a section on graphic design tips for writers.
Review
Review begins with editing, the time-honoured process of polishing a document to bring it up to a publishable state. This chapter includes highly practical tools such as an Editing Checklist and the Levels of Editing diagram. It also covers peer review, testing and validation; defining the review team; and conducting formal stakeholder reviews.
Publish
Publication can be a complicated process, whereby technical writers carefully manufacture and launch a final product. This chapter covers common publication tasks such as establishing document control, performing final checks like proofreading, and communication with stakeholders. It also discusses more advanced scenarios such as print production and translation.
Templates
The process is supported by 11 templates, designed to help you execute the detailed activities in each step of the Technical Writing Process. The Templates appendix includes the 11 templates in full as images. They're also available for purchase and download via the Templates page on this site in their original Microsoft Office format.
Praise for the Book
Every aspiring author / tech writer in college should have this book.
This is exactly the sort of guide I wish I had when I first started tech writing.
Aspiring writers throughout the enterprise will find this to be a solid resource as they try to figure out how they should go about documenting something. It's logically laid out, not too heavy on jargon, and uses good diagrams and illustrations.
This pragmatic approach is excellent and fills a desperate need in the tech writing world. Many a point raised will have the older hands nodding sagely and the younger people remembering the advice when they first run into those issues.
A well-written, comprehensive and practical guide for technical writers. It is packed full of great information and is very easy to read. I particularly like the Insights, What does that mean? and Tips callouts which appear throughout the book.
Technical Writing Process is the professionalisation of the technical writing discipline. It rightly considers the holistic context for a technical document and provides a comprehensive cookbook for getting it right within an organisation. The insights, examples and templates are perfect and pragmatic. The definitive standard in technical writing.
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Purchase the Technical Writing Process
The Technical Writing Process is available for purchase in e-book and paperback formats. The templates shown in the book are also available for purchase and download in their original Microsoft Office format.
Templates
$9.95