How to Write a How to Guide

How to guides are everywhere, we use them to learn new software, to find out the nifty functions of our home electronics, to cook, and to even keep us safe when we are ill. For documents that surround almost every aspect of our lives most people rarely if at all write one...or do they? If you have ever written down an old family recipe for a friend, written directions on how to get somewhere, or even directions for feeding and watering your pets while you are away then you have written a "how to" essay. You don't have to have a degree in technical writing or English, in fact a lot of the people that write manuals for dvd players could probably use a lesson on putting their thoughts on the product in plain simple English. In this article I'm hoping to show you the basics for conveying your thoughts into a clean easy to understand How-To-Guide.

The first step is to create an introduction, which is a paragraph that tells your reader a small amount about the topic and what you hope to accomplish with the essay. The first sentence of your essay should be something interesting that grabs the attention of your reader. A fact or maybe a little bit of history on the topic can often pull your audience in and make them feel as if they are watching a presentation rather than reading a manual.

The next step is to start explaining the process you wish to teach them about. Keep in mind that your audience may never have even heard of what you trying to tell them up until now, it is crucial to keep it simple. We all know how frustrating it can be to try and learn something new and end up not understanding most of what was said. A good example of this would be turning on a light switch. The bad way would be "to operate the electronic gate, move lever into upward position to allow the flow of electrons to migrate to the luminescent glass dome." The good way or lamens terms would "to turn light on move switch to upward position." It is also very important to keep the steps of the process in sequential or chronological order. This means the specific order the process must be done in to end up with the desired result. If you start putting steps in that were supposed to be earlier in the process you end up with a guide that looks like it was translated from English, to Japanese, to French, then back to English. A confusing guide can lead to more frustration, which may cause the reader to never finish what you have written. It is also a good idea to go back through your process and make sure the steps make sense. I would even recommend following your document and doing the steps as if you haven't done them before.

All right, we have our introduction and our simple to understand process, in many cases you might you be done. Stopping at this point is good for recipes and cold medication, but for guides that you want your audience to remember it takes a little extra to hold their interest. At this point you can go back and add in interesting facts, diagrams, pictures, and examples. Not only will these simple things hold your reader's attention, but they will make the content of your essay even easier to understand. A good example of this is a cookbook, while following a recipe it usually shows what your food should look like while you are preparing it.

Now its time for our final step, the conclusion, which is another paragraph that summarizes the process again and goes over what the final result should be. Often times the conclusion can be the shortest paragraph of the entire essay, sometimes just a few sentences long, but none the less important. It can often contain more history or modernization of the topic, a small amount of information on related topics, or just thanking your audience for reading.

This in a nutshell is the basics of writing a How-To-Essay. Just remember to start with an introduction, move onto the process, and make it interesting if needed, then conclude. As long as you follow this basic template you should be able to turn out a pretty good How-To-Essay. Good luck in your procedural writings.