The tech-writer’s journal #1— The evolution of tech-writing

Hey there!

The tech writer’s journal series is my humble attempt to record all my learnings in my journey as a tech-writer. Let’s start with the basics.

The ultimate goal of a tech-writer

As the famous saying goes, ”Failing to plan equals planning to fail.” As writers, it is essential to look at the big picture and use every task in hand to carve out the desired outcome. So, what is the ultimate goal of a tech-writer?

”To deliver the right information to the right person at the right time in the right language and format on the device of the customer’s choosing. “- Every Page is Page One, by Mark Baker.

Now, let me give you a moment to let that sink in. For the longest time, the primordial goal of tech-writers has been to simplify things, be it for a developer or an end-user.

Everything has changed, yet nothing has changed.

Chances are that you might presume that the tech-writers and content-writers are a new entry to the food chain of the tech world, which is not true.

Tech-writers have been in multiple industries fo the longest time. The only thing that has evolved through time is the mode in which we deliver the content. A few decades earlier, before the digital revolution, we delivered content in the form of books, instruction manuals, pamphlets, and so on.
In today’s world, everyone is interlinked through the web, either by choice or by sheer necessity.

The difference in delivering content — Before and after the digital outburst

Let us understand this using an analogy. Consider searching for information in a book and on the web.

The information presented in a book is organized linearly. If you have to search for a particular piece of information, you need to go through the table of contents, and find the topic that might have the answer to your query, and flip through the pages until you find the information. Let us assume that you don’t find the information that you were looking for in the chapter of your choice. The next probable action would be to flip through adjacent chapters based on the depth of the information you extracted in the current one.

Consider the same scenario and replace the book with the web. You open your browser and type in your question, and your browser presents you with a list of links that might probably have an answer to your question. When you fail to find your answer on a particular webpage, the next course of action will not be to search for the answer in the previous or next webpages of the same website. You would simply close the tab and move on to the next webpage in your search result. This is where the context of delivering the ”right information” comes in. On the web, the information is not arranged linearly. The chances that the reader already knows all the basic information to understand the explanation to his query is minimal. Thus, as tech-writers, the responsibility to present all the necessary information on the page that the reader might land. Or at least organize the information in a way that it is easy for the reader to navigate to the right page.

The difference in information consumption

I would consider extracting information from a book to be a wholesome meal. And I would owe it to the structure in which the information is organized in a book. Although it is possible to directly jump to a point where you might get instant answers, chances of you trying to skim through other chapters are more. Thus, allowing yourself to feed on all the necessary details.

In contrast, searching for information on the web is like snacking. You simply get your hands on a project, and whenever you get stuck, you turn to the web for answers. The chances of allowing yourself to feed on all the necessary information related to the problem are less.

I am not trying to project the web as a villain here. The goal is to understand user consumption better and to improve the quality of information delivered through the web.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

Cheers!

References

- “Every Page is Page One” — By Mark Baker
- “Everybody Writes” — By Ann Handley