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Creating technical documentation is part of doing work in the IT industry. Technical manuals, technical specification guides, support guides, implementation instructions - all are types of technical documentation and are a part of the job. Many technical roles in the IT industry are involved in the documentation process. It might seem easy to just put some words and diagrams together, a table of contents and call it a technical document, but it’s much more than that. I’ve mentioned five tips below on how to write great tech docs. Use A Well-Structured Table of Contents The table of contents is among the most important component of a document. The table of contents lists what is in fact in the document and how it is organized. It is used to help users know that the document provides the information they are looking for. Going through the table of contents, they could easily check if it contains what they need, or if they have to read another document. Another advantage of having a well structured table of contents is it allows the reader to discover the information they need quickly. Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF as well as other document applications allow clickable links of the table of contents. This enables you to click the item or the page number and it will move you to that page. Very beneficial for finding topics in a hurry. Be Succinct But Thorough Being a technical document author, it’s challenging to figure out what amount and what kind of information to put into this document. To write a great document, try to be brief, but thorough. This means not to continue on and into all kinds of detail about certain areas that are not needed by the reader. It's not easy to tell what’s relevant and what isn’t - but try to consider the reader and target audience when you’re writing the document. If you are too “wordy” or use too much information where it’s unnecessary, it will turn the readers off and it won’t be a good document. Be Consistent Throughout The Document Consistency is a big way to enhance a document. It makes it look more professional, and actually more readable to the user. When I state consistency, I mean uniformity both in the terminology you use and the formatting are applying. A number of people won’t notice this. Even so, if you’re composing a technical document, it’s more than likely for other technical people, who are usually detail-focused people. Make sure that your document uses the same style throughout. Make an effort to break the data up and make it readable to the users by using white space effectively. Employing the same terms is also recommended. This can ensure that the user knows you’re referring to the same thing when you use the same words. When you use words interchangeably, for example “desktop”, “PC”, “computer”, it might confuse the user, when you actually mean the same thing. That’s a fairly easy example, but the idea is that you should select the one term and stick to it. Keep It Accurate And Error-Free It almost goes without saying that technical documentation should be error free. As I mentioned previously, many readers of the document are going to be other technical users, and there’s a good chance the errors will jump out to them. In addition to that, if the errors don’t get noticed, then it will provide them with the wrong specifics of the system or area that you’re documenting - which defeats the intention of the document! Avoid Large Screen Captures Applying screen captures or screenshots in your documentation is definitely an effective way of explaining your point to the reader. It’s particularly useful for software documentation or support processes, which can be easy to take screenshots of. Having said that, computer screens have gotten bigger throughout the years, but A4 sheets have stayed the same size. This leaves an inclination to include large screenshots in a document, which makes the screenshots small and ineffective. Including screenshots is a great idea - don’t get me wrong - but seek to only include areas which are connected to the section you’re explaining. It may lead to more screenshots, however they will be more effective and make the document more readable.
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