That sounds like a question with an obvious answer, doesn’t it? Yes and no. To be an effective technical writer, you do need to know how to write well. But you don’t have to be a great stylist.

In a recent blog entry, Tom Johnson pointed out that technical writing isn’t creative writing. At my first real technical writing job, I was helping a colleague create a writer’s guide for the documentation group. Something that he wrote in an early draft sticks with me to this day:

You’re not going to hang a manual on your wall. If you want to get artistic, save it for your novel.

That’s not to say that writing documentation is merely the act of pounding out dry prose. It isn’t. There is some creativity involved, but it’s of a more restrained kind. That creativity comes from how you present the information, both textually and visually. The writing, though, needs to be easy to read, complete, concise, and to the point. The sometimes jokey and allusive qualities of my other writing never seep into my documentation.

In many ways, technical writing is like journalism. One of the keys to good journalism is organization. The same goes for technical writing. Your information must have a smooth, logical flow. And a good technical writer shares many of the skills of a journalist: the ability to effectively interview, knowledge of how to do research and to mold the various threads of that research into a coherent piece of work.

(I’m being deliberately vague on this point. The intersection of journalism and technical writing is a major thread in a presentation I’m developing; one which I hope to give at my alma mater sometime in the near future.)

As for actual writing skills, a good technical communicator really needs to have a solid grounding in grammar and usage. One skill that a writer needs is the ability to write tightly — to, for example, use six words instead of 10. I’ve worked with a number of writers who tended to write long, rambling passages and procedures that could have been cut down by up to 70% and have been many times more useful and coherent. I’ve even worked with a couple of folks — English majors to boot — who didn’t know what the passive is and why it can be a bad thing to use.

But to be an effective technical writer, you don’t need to be able to pen scintillating short stories or novels, or to author pithy essays. That ability helps, but it’s not essential. You need to keep things tight, to keep things flowing, and keep things as interesting as possible. That’s not as easy as it sounds, as many people who try to create documentation discover.

Of course, there are other skills that a technical communicator needs. For example, knowledge of information design, technical skills (which Aaron and I discussed at length in a podcast earlier this year), a knowledge of the tools of the trade, and more.

Writing is an important part of technical writing. While a lot of people can write, not all of them can write well. Or even decently. Simply because you’ve banged out a manual doesn’t mean that it’s a good one. Writing is a skill that takes time and practice to develop. If you want to be an effective technical communicator, you need to devote the time and expend the sweat to develop your craft.

Related posts:

1. Documentation is important, but so is good writing
2. Becoming a technical communicator
3. What an autistic child taught me about technical writing