Technical Writing for Dummies

Whether you’re contemplating a career as a technical writer, or you just got tapped for a technical writing project, this friendly guide is your ticket to getting your tech writing skills up to snuff. It shows you step-by-step how to:

• Research and organize information for your documents
• Plan your project in a technical brief
• Fine-tune and polish your writing
• Work collaboratively with your reviewers
• Create great user manuals, awesome abstracts, and more
• Write first-rate electronic documentation
• Write computer- and Web-based training courses

Discover how to write energized technical documents that have the impact you want on your readers. Wordsmith Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts covers all the bases, including:

• All about the red-hot market for technical writing and how to get work as a technical writer
• The ABCs of creating a strong technical document, including preparing a production schedule, brainstorming, outlining, drafting, editing, rewriting, testing, presentation, and more
• Types of technical documents, including user manuals, abstracts, spec sheets, evaluation forms and questionnaires, executive summaries, and presentations
• Writing for the Internet—covers doing research online, creating multimedia documents, developing computer-based training and Web-based training, and writing online help

Combining examples, practical advice, and priceless insider tips on how to write whiz-bang technical documents, Technical Writing For Dummies is an indispensable resource for newcomers to technical writing and pros looking for new ideas to advance their careers.

Generally, the content is excellent - it covers all the basics a novice tech writer needs to know. However, I question the way the content has been organized and presented... it doesn't follow a logical order. There's a section on editing, then a section on brainstorming and figuring out how to start writing, and then later on it swings back to proofreading. Ideally, the information should be presented the same way the writing process generally works: brainstorming, writing the first draft, THEN proofing/editing, and so on.

I also found the short section on "preparing the technical brief" inadequate, considering planning and scoping out requirements is THE most important phase of any documentation project. And for some reason, this information is buried in the "understanding your reader" section, when it should be a separate section all its own (as information about your audience forms only PART of a project plan).

The author has included a few too many personal experiences in this book - understandably she wanted to inject some fun into what could be pretty dry reading material, but her style sometimes comes off as too "cute".

Overall, this book contains a lot of excellent content - the structure and presentation just need to be re-tooled for maximum effectiveness.


Dummy   November 27, 2002
 10 out of 18 found this review helpful

The title of this book should read "The Autobiography of a Technical Writer." Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts' career, although auspicious indeed, is not what I was looking for in a manual. I became so exhausted reading her personal triumphs that I decided not to become a technical writer. The book contains nothing of substance, nor does it give any pertinent information on the realities of skills necessary (less "soft skills")for a junior writer to crack the program-specific job market.