Standards that Make a Good Technical Writer

Whether one seeks to ply the writing trade by doling out multi-volume maintenance manuals for military aircraft, or by authoring a warning message later appearing on a label wrapped around a TV power cord - it's a technical writer who crafts these words.

While it's admirable that you may wish to investigate technical writing as a new career, it's a good idea to know what you're getting into. If you are seriously considering technical writing as a career, my hope here is not to cover every conceivable factor. Rather I wish to give you a few things to mull before venturing onto the broad floor space that technical writing covers.

Fortunately, a career as a technical writer (sometimes also called "technical communicator") may offer great opportunities in literally any industry.

Need proof? In my 10+ year career as a technical writer, I have worked for the following kinds of companies:

* Startup software training outfit
* Online / traditional brick-and-mortar school
* Computer hardware manufacturer
* Shipping and logistics
* Healthcare provider
* Genetics and tissue sampling firm
* Software firms
* Medical device manufacturer
* Industrial centrifuge manufacturer
* Fuels and Lubricants

My work history above proves that businesses of all kinds need tech writers. Please note from the above that these include "hard" industries (like manufacturing) as well as "soft" industries (like IT). During my career as a tech writer, my actual job titles ranged anywhere from "Technical Writer" to "Corporate Communications Officer".

Whatever the industry, the need for good tech writing abounds.

Now getting someone to hire you is the core of our discussion here...

Still Debated: The Standards That Make a Good Technical Writer

Unfortunately, the tech writing profession comes as a double-edged sword. While companies need tech writers, the qualifications a good tech writer should have still are not very well defined. As a result, the value of your job (and your performance) as a technical writer may frequently be under question.

Why? For several reasons. The first of which has to do with...

The History Of Technical Writing

Before the days of mass production, people learned to do things in a very personable and one-on-one manner: typically through apprenticeships in the classic trades. In this scenario, user manuals and other documentation as we know them today were few to none. During those ancient times the medium of communication was through the old way: the so-called "oral traditions" or storytelling.

A well-known writing authority, ProEdit, states:

"Technical writing has been around since the first technical writer, Cro-Magnon man, was drawing on cave walls."

Putting our ancestral technical writers aside, when we compare it to other well-established trades, technical writing as we know it is a relative newcomer: ProEdit further states:

"...most experts would agree that the golden age of technical writing started with the invention of the computer."

Technical Writing Is A Young Trade

Since the relatively recent arrival of technology (within the last 100 years or less), few to no standards have been universally accepted as a means of identifying good tech writer skills.

To exacerbate this already tenuous situation, we must factor in a stigma from the past...

OMG! The First Tech Writers Were... Engineers!

(Note: Some statements below are made entirely with tongue-in-cheek - but hopefully they make the point.)

With an accepted proliferation of consumer products, the need for good documentation has finally been recognized. But this is not to say the people hired to do the job of technical writing were good writers.

To make matters worse, the first tech writers were (heaven forbid!) engineers.

As some of us know, engineers are geeks - life forms that originate from other planets. They have a hard time communicating, and may have minimal social skills. In many cases (not all of them), trying to communicate with an engineer in normal human speech is a task in itself. Given this difficulty with communication, trying to have an engineer write something intelligibly for you is even more challenging.

With the advent of the industrial era, companies traditionally had engineers write the user documentation for their products. As many experienced technical writers know, using engineers as writers can have disastrous results.

For the few companies smart enough not to use engineers, they hire the next best thing: tech writers who have industry-specific knowledge. The better writers of this lot are willing to learn up on the matter at hand (thus the industry term "subject matter expert" or "SME").

What Else?

While plenty been written about the tech writing trade, these words serve as some discussion to help you think over what has proven (at least for me) to be a growing and rewarding career.

Get out there, try some trail-run tech writing, talk with seasoned writers and ask them about the benefits and pitfalls. With this arsenal of information, you will be well armed for jumping into the world of technical writing and technical communication.

Good luck!