We’re all Tech Writers Now: Three Steps to Clear Writing for the Web

By: Nigel Fogden
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:43:26
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Take some tips from technical writing that will make your ideas clear and persuasive in the new reading environment of the web.

Print media puts the reader in the passenger's seat. What if you don’t want a character to die? What if you don’t like the direction the story has taken? Traditional reading is linear—you start at chapter one and you go to the end, with no detours in between.

Instruction manuals have always been different. Who reads instruction manuals from beginning to end? Instead you dip into it, try something, and if that doesn’t seem to work, flip a few pages backward or forward and try again.

Now the internet has become a huge manual where the reader can move around at will—technology has stolen authorial control. You have to expect your readers to jump around. To be successful, anything you write for the web has to follow the same three rules that technical writers use:

Write in Chunks

Readers pick and choose. Understand that your audience is not expecting a story—they have specific goals. Points have to be self-contained and clearly marked to help them find what they’re looking for and move on. Respect your reader’s time—don’t make them eat the sundae when all they want is the cherry.

Follow a Structure

You can structure your content by category, rank, location—but there must be a structure. By organizing your information you are giving your reader a tool that lets them find what they’re looking for and skip what they don’t need. If you can’t find a structure that works, you need to define your points more clearly.

Connect it Together

You can’t force your reader to follow the path you’ve set for them, but you can give them access to information that supports your message. Don’t be afraid to link, both to resources outside your document and to pages in it. Your role is to help them achieve their goals; point them towards resources that help them do that.

Like technical writing, the internet is about helping people find information. Adopt some of the principals of technical writing in your own work to make it get results.

Nigel Fogden is an English teacher and writer with 24 by 5 Tech Comm, a technical writing company that specializes in fast, high-quality, software documentation. For more articles on writing, technology and business, sign up for the 24 by 5 Tech Comm Newsletter at www.24by5.com

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