jinny's blog

If you are an Engineer or a Computer Science graduate and looking for a career other than software development or testing, then try considering technical writing as a potential career option. Little is known about technical writing as a career and people miss out on good job opportunities.

But, as companies are realizing the need of technical documentation the demand for technical writers has also gone up with salaries at par with that of software developers and testers.

As in any other profession, to become an effective technical writer one needs to acquire certain type of skills. When technical writing came into being, it required mostly the writing skills as huge manuals or guides were a standard. Ever since the fields of technology and communications have grown, so also the skills required for these professions. Below mentioned are some of the skills required by a technical writer:

Technical writing is a field of professional writing on technical subjects. It is quite different from fiction or journalism. Fiction includes poetry, short stories, plays and novels. The goal of expressive writing is to express one's feelings through description and narration. However, if we want to read about rocket science or brain surgery, we need a technical writer to tell us exactly what they mean.

Introduction
The objective of technical writing is to clearly convey some information to a select group of audience in a way that topic can straight away be understood.
Technical writing is a way of analyzing, generating and managing information about various products and technical procedures to be used in the generation of technical documentation.
Technical writers write and sometimes edit manuals, newsletters, user guides, online help files, reports etc. and many different types of text.

Technical writing comprises of writing and designing of user manuals, training manuals and developer's guide etc. for plenty of applications and products.