Remember high school English and your teacher’s dreaded red ink?  Several years ago, I was one of those English teachers.  Given the amount of written communication in today’s workplace, the basic writing principles that I taught as a high school English teacher are still critical skills for adults.  In my classroom, we would start the week with a worksheet of “Comon Writting Misteaks;” consider this list your flashback to sentence correction in high school!

1. The first time you use an acronym, write the whole phrase and put the acronym in parentheses.  After that, you can just use the acronym.
2. Write the words for numbers ten and under.  Use numerals for 11 and higher.
3. Write in paragraphs that have a main idea and supporting sentences.
4. Use proper spelling of words, not colloquial language.  One I see all the time in emails is could of or would of.  It’s what it sounds like when you speak it but it MUST be written as could have or would have.
5. Don’t leave a preposition at the end of a sentence.  It sounds a little awkward to say with which or for whom but those lost prepositions at the end of a sentence are like fingernails on a chalkboard for many readers!
6. Use a semi-colon to separate two complete sentences; use a comma to separate items in a list or series of items.
7. Be concise.  This covers a wide variety of common writing errors!  Longer sentences and paragraphs are not better; it is usually easier for a reader to mentally process shorter pieces of information.  Avoid run-on sentences and full-page paragraphs.
8. Be consistent in your use of italics, underlining, and bold text.  At the same time, don’t over-format your text.  It is very distracting to a reader to try to comprehend a sentence that contains different fonts or styles.
9. Ensure you have parallel structure in bulleted lists or ideas in a series.  For example, every item in a bulleted list might be capitalized and start with a present-tense verb.
10. Proofread.  Proofread. Proofread!  As a professional writer, there is nothing more embarrassing than when someone points out a grammatical or spelling error in any of my writing, even if it’s a casual email to a friend.  However, any writing done for business purposes must be proofread!  It is hard to take seriously any business writing that contains blaring errors of spelling or grammar.

While this is only a very short list of best practices for writing, consider how you can use these guidelines whenever you are writing, whether it is for wallboard messages, corporate emails, communications with colleagues, or business bulletins.

The technical writing process is pretty similar to the writing process we all learned in middle school:  Prewriting, Writing, and Revising.  Combine these three steps with an incredible amount of specificity and clarity and you have a technically-written document!

Obviously, the Prewriting, Writing, Revising steps are a lot more involved for writing technical documents than the brainstorming and scribbled five-paragraph essay from your school years.  Now, you need to consider so much more:  the goal and objectives of your document, the delivery method, the formatting standard, and clarity of the content.

Prewriting

The prewriting stage in technical writing is less about brainstorming ideas and more about clarifying details ahead of time.  The more information you can clarify prior to writing, the easier the actual writing process will be.

Crucial questions to ask at this time include:

• Audience – Who are they?  What is their skill set?  What is their motivation to read the document?
• Goals and Objectives – What is the purpose of this document?
• Delivery Method – How will this document be distributed?
• Format – What formatting standards will be used?  Consider a standard cover page and with company branding, headers and footers, page numbers, text format, heading levels, and paragraph and line spacing.

Once you have a handle on these questions, it is critical to get approval from key stakeholders.  There is no sense in writing a document that will have a misguided objective or unacceptable format!

It is also ideal to create a document outline prior to writing.   Especially if you are creating numerous documents for one project, outlines help you maintain a consistent structure to enhance the document’s usability.

Writing

Now you can begin the writing process.  After your careful prewriting, the writing stage should be a relative breeze.   Knowing the purpose of the document and the audience will help keep your writing focused, and your predetermined outline and formatting should provide you with an easy roadmap.

The writing stage will vary, depending on what you are writing.  For an installation guide, you will walk through the installation process and carefully document each step.  For FAQs, you will need to talk to customers or track customer service calls to determine what questions need to be answered.

Revising

Once you have a draft of your document, the hard work begins!  When editing documents, I focus my attentions on three primary aspects:

• Content – Unless you are a technical guru, you will need to have your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) read the document to guarantee that all details, technical and otherwise, are correct.

• Grammar– In addition to common grammatical standards, such as punctuation and capitalization, this is where I check for inconsistencies (e.g., verb tense, acronyms, parallel bullets, etc.).

• Style – Once I’m sure that the content and grammar are correct, I review for style.   Commonly known as wordsmithing, I’m not ashamed to admit that this is the part that I most enjoy!  Is all of the content clear and concise?  Would presenting the information in a different format (e.g., figure, table, bullets, numbered list) make it more understandable?

Once you’ve thoroughly reviewed the document and vetted it with SMEs and stakeholders, your document is ready for publication.  With any luck at all, it will be a while before there is a hardware or software upgrade that requires you restart the whole process!