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What Skills are Important for a Technical Writer

· Technical Writing

Writing is a separate field that requires a number of skills. Some writers excel in writing fiction and stories while others excel in dealing with the technical stuff and documentations. Today, many writers are going towards the technical side of writing as it is well paid and increases the knowledge of the writer. However, technical writers should have some extra skills in comparison to other bloggers and writers. In this article, we will discuss some essential skills that a technical writer should have. These skills are mentioned below:

Tech savvy

Technical writers need to be tech savvy to keep themselves updated about the latest technology. Not only is this, but they need to have the facility of technology in their hands for completing their tasks. Learning about new technology will reward the writers at the end of the day. Whether a writer is working as a freelancer or for some organization, being a tech savvy will always give some reward to the technical writer.

Exceptional research skills

Having exceptional research skills are mandatory for a writer. Technical writers need to write technical stuff but research is essential for it. Since they need to extract some technical material, which is not easily available on the web most of the time, they need to go out of the box. Some technical writers need to have access to online libraries and some journal articles. Apart from it, if the technical writer is working for some particular field, he should be aware about the websites that provide data in that field. For instance, if a writer is serving in a pharmaceutical organization, he should do abundant research in writing pharmaceutical documents.

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Great skills for interviewing SMEs

A number of technical writers need to conduct interviews for getting information. Taking interviews is an art and not everyone excels in it. A technical writer must know what questions to ask and what should be the series of questions. In addition to this, they should have great listening skills and when they select any appropriate SME, they should know what information to note down and what is useless. Apart from it, they should be aware of the dos and don’ts of conducting an interview. Things like when to start an interview, what should be the initial questions, how to extract maximum information and how to end an interview are essential to understand for a technical writer.

Showing ideas graphically

Some expert technical writers are of the view that showing your things graphically will leave a positive impact on the reader rather than writing lengthy and boring descriptions. On one hand, it becomes easier to understand and on the other hand, it looks appealing to the readers. Apart from it, graphical presentations save time for the reader as well as for the writer. Presenting things in diagrams and graphical manner looks difficult in the beginning but with some practice technical writers become expert in it.

Technical skills

It is imperative that the technical writer should have all the technical knowledge. The documentations of hardware and software require plenty of knowledge which makes a technical writer different from other writers. In addition to this, technical writers are sometimes required to write user guides and for that they should understand and comprehend the programming languages. The ultimate aim of any technical writer should be to translate the technical knowledge into simple words.

Writing skills

Since technical writers need to write the technical stuff, they should have an art of explaining a difficult thing in plain language. Some documents need lengthy explanations while others need short and concise sentences. Thus, a technical writer should clearly understand the topic and then try to write it in the simplest manner. If the writer fails to understand the subject, he will never be able to explain it to the readers. Other things, such as the grammatical structure of sentences, sentence flow, introduction of writing and conclusion should be perfect.

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Knowledge of tools

Several tools are used in technical writing and every writer should know how to use them. Tools like Adobe, MadCap, RoboHelp, Ms Word, FrameMaker,and so on are widely used in documentation writing. Many technical writers do short courses of using these tools before starting their career in technical writing.

In short, technical writers should have vast knowledge of all the technical things. These skills depend on the writer’s experience and educational background. Newbie technical writers do not have all of these skills but with the passage of time they excel in their career.

Author’s Bio

John Alee is a blogger and works for social media writing. He is also a technical writer at Fresh Essays - Essay Help Company and he also arranges workshops for training newbie technical writers.