Think of technical writers as professional demystifiers. They take complex, highly specific information and break it down into clear, easy-to-understand content for non-technical audiences. Things like instruction manuals for medical equipment, engineering specs, software documentation, technical processes, white papers, and ebooks. Just because it’s technical doesn’t mean creativity goes out the window. Stellar technical writers still need to compel the reader to learn more and adhere to company branding and style guidelines. As technology becomes increasingly part of daily life, these writers are more in demand than ever, especially if they have these crucial talents:

Technical writers are like the antidote to the brilliant physicist who sees infinity as a no-brainer but can’t explain it to his buddy. It takes a highly ordered mind to untangle a mass of mind-boggling concepts into a clear set of smaller chunks easy for anybody to understand. The key to technical documentation is structure: arranging the information so the reader can navigate it quickly to find what they need. Like the professional organizer who can see through the clutter to the orderly haven underneath, it’s about translating, distilling, downsizing, and bucketing.

Any good writer should be able to inhabit different voices and tones for different audiences. But for the technical writer, it’s vital. One need might be a consumer user manual for operating a copy machine. But they might also create the training specs for the copier support technicians who will need much more advanced knowledge. Completely different audiences and levels of detail. One requires using conversational language while the other will be packed with industry terminology.

If you can find a tech writer who used to be a coder, bullseye. But most of the time these writers need to interview a lot of subject-matter experts in order to thoroughly understand and convey the subject. So it’s important to find someone who can communicate well with many different functional roles and levels, adapting their approach depending on who they’re talking to, from software engineer to machine worker, to pharmacist, to CEO.

Of course, technical writing goes beyond just detailed how-to's or manuals. Today, it's more and more about translating our ever-advancing technologies into plain English, so people can better understand their relationship with technology. Some thoughts on current trends:

Cybersecurity: Privacy, please.

"Cybersecurity writing is in particular demand, and there’s an increasing focus on data privacy. People are gradually becoming aware of just how much their data can be used and manipulated. As such, this is an area where there’s considerable public interest. There’s also a need for companies to address their own internal privacy issues and create content (and even internal documentation) around that."

Benny Taylor, Technology and Entrepreneurship Writer

cv/BennyTaylor

Explain things in a narrative.

"A good technical writer can take technical concepts, such as how to configure settings or fix a bug, and explain it in a narrative that makes sense to both engineers and software buyers alike."

Jake Wengroff, Technical Writer

cv/JakeWengroff

Writers will bring the personality that AI cannot.

"The arrival of AI and machine learning can help technical writing jolt from its more prosaic roots. Tomorrow, writers should be able to make documentation specific to a customer's need. Machine learning will work to research data and create templates for guides at a blinding pace, but it will be the writer who will continue to add the personality into it."

Saikat Basu, Technology Writer and Editor

cv/saikat

Microsoft has come a long way in the instructional design department. Particularly the documentation for its Surface tablet. It has its own icon on the home screen so it’s easy to find when you need help. The language is simple and laid out in the logical way a person might start troubleshooting. Within apps like Paint, short written and visual, non-intrusive tips appear as you go, organically guiding you to create, design, and crop much faster and more intuitively than in previous iterations. Special features like Magic Select make it super easy to cut and paste things in and out of your pic. ​​​​​​

Famous first for affordable, minimalist plug-and-play furniture, IKEA is also the gold standard when it comes to simple documentation. Take this coffee table instruction doc: There are literally no words. That can be good or bad, depending on the user. While the Swedish brand’s products are often called out for being harder to assemble than they appear, the instructions themselves can be a refreshing approach for more visual learners.

Secrets From a Technical Writer

“Keep up on emerging technologies like speech recognition and virtual and augmented reality to see where the writing needs will be. Even if robots do take over, someone needs to tell them what to do, and us how to shut them off.”

Anonymous Technical Writer