“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.” ~Samuel Johnson
As a technical writer, I am responsible for communicating technical and business information to the reader that helps to understand and use the application. It is a craft through which information is delivered to those who need it. The word “Technical Writer” sounds new, but this profession was present long time back, where there was a need of interaction between human and application. Help or knowledge is required to get full advantage of the application, even the manuscripts from the medieval period could be looked upon as early technical writing. Over the years it has matured, and is still growing at an admirable manner. We understand reference and task-based information well enough that when we produce help files. Talking about a product development process, technical writing has not only been a part of the end user documentation, it has also assisted the organizations in the design and development process.
My inclination towards technology and software tools led me to love this technical writing job. This profession allows me to keep going with my passion of creativity. I would like to call myself as “Technical Communicator,” my work is an action oriented, expressing tasks precisely and clearly. Style guides and check lists help me to write correctly and concisely. I feel challenging and excited to find new dimension in defining my work. I interact with the team members to gather information about the usage, policies, and concept of the project and product. No doubt, I prepare documentation, but it is different from content writing, journalism, copy writing and others. I feel that technical writers must understand the product, project, technology, and business issues.
In the early days of my profession, I mostly used to write ‘User Guide,’ task involves screen-shots of application, drawing flowcharts, and step-by-step task completion procedure. Analyzing and running the application repeatedly some time led me to find bugs, which helped me to understand the application better. Afterward I also put my hand in web development, flowchart design, and image processing. I realized that lot of things has to be taken care in documentation, my technical background and my zeal to learn more helped me to venture into programming, often I get involved in application (software) form design, that’s what technical writers are different from other writers, we wears many hats in IT profession, one has to be versatile and their interpersonal skill is important for a team work.
I love critics, even document need testing. In editing process, I ensure consistency across each of the help files and controlling versions of the help as edits are made.
A software or hardware company had documents both for internal and external purpose. We all know how to use a mobile phone; still a manual comes with it. Study shows that 80% lifetime cost of the software is due to support and maintenance, which could be reduced through good documents. Companies are realizing the importance of documentation, however there are few formal education to to know or learn about technical writing, few communities are coming up to discuss and popularize it. As per Rahul Prabhakar it is right to say “Technical writing - the new black gold of India.” Let’s hope in the upcoming era of help we will revolutionize user-machine interaction through our active participation.
