Changing the face of Technical Writing

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Technical writing is constantly evolving, as new developments and technologies are emerging at a fast pace.

Technical writers the skilled people who read and refer several documents and gain knowledge before they commence writing. Technical writers must know the in and out of the product and the functionalities associated to provide information to the end user or the customer.

Legacy traditional writers was linked to the electrical products or equipments for consumers. For eg: The technical document or the records written by the writers in NASA department is circulated among millions of people. They have own styles, voice and pattern of writing and follow their own documentation style and all the people in the department more or less adhere to the same standards.
But technical writers need to update and refine themselves constantly with the new technologies that emerge at a fast pace. Some of the trending technologies in various fields are cloud based, complex financial instruments which occupy a major market segment. Hence technical writers have to put to constant efforts to stand up the market expectations to survive and establish themselves to create their space.

New age tools and trends in technical writing

Advertorials

Advertorials are the articles which are published in the digital media on various topics written by the experts having the skills and expertize. The content must be inline with the product that the company is trying to launch or promote.
The documentation written by the technical writers must be precise and clear which serves the purpose of educating the usage of the product and as a reference to the public.

Digital content for handheld devices

There has been a complete transformation from the written content which is printed that’s again transformed to digital content compatible for the personal computers and smartphone devices which marks as a standard in technical writing. The next big move is to write content which is clear & concise which is easily understandable and compatible across multiple devices.

Cloud storage of technical manuals

Technical documents are not confined to the product itself, for instance if you have a product which is quite old and the manual is no longer with you, not to worry. Thanks to the world of cloud storage, you can instantly access the user manual online at any point of time.

IT based authoring tools

In the digital era, technical writing have transformed and successfully handled multiple roles such as proofreaders which cannot be overlooked, copy editors, etc. It’s not surprising that such roles have been succeeded by some sophisticated software tools such as

  • Word processors (Microsoft Word, Openoffice)
  • Authoring and publishing tools (Microsoft Visio, Adobe FrameMaker, WordPress)
  • Image editors such as (Adobe TCS, Adobe DreamWeaver and Epic Editor)
  • In the web development, there are several tools such as Dreamweaver, Magento etc.

Associated roles in technical writing

Why does a technical writer ever have to grieve? Technical writers are always in demand and need some skills to polish themselves to transform into the upcoming roles as a technical documentation writer.

1. Being a technical writer, make the best use of images, graphics which can embedded in between the text, to enhance the user experience thus transforming from content form to visual form for easy understanding.
2. A layout designer can efficiently plan the web page layout of blogs and web pages.
3. Script writers can use roles plays to elaborate on a product’s user functions.
4. User experience testers can act as proxy end users and simulate actual usage to discover human usage behavior patterns and ease of use.
5. Video content creators can bring out the best information about the product usage in the form of videos, some graphical usage and animation.

Bottom line is, legacy technical writers can be evergreen and pave their own mark by writing anything that interests the user.

Nagendra Bommasani
I am founder/researcher/ analyst, interested in creating big trends in Digital Marketing and web technologies. More than a development, a niche idea - seeing it transformed to output with perfect implementation gives me the boost to indulge in complex projects. Coming out of the cocoon of Comfort Zone gave me challenges as well as laurels.

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