Re: What Are Writing Skills

["Damien Braniff" <Damien -dot- Braniff -at- asg -dot- com>]

I think everyone would agree that you need to understand a 'product'
before you can document it. The level of understanding needed will vary
- you may well not need to know what's under the bonnet (hood!) of
software to produce a good user manual. Obviously the better your
understanding, the better the manual will, or should, be. Often there
isn't the time to get the level of knowledge suggested by TWers - you
learn what you need to in order to get the job done.
Once you've got the information and know how it works what is you job?
You need to structure the information for the user. To me this involves:
	Providing the information the users needs to carry out their
tasks. Additional background information can be provided if necessary -
depends on the users and the tasks. As somebody else said this involves
what is left out as much as what is put in.
	You've selected the information the user needs (I'm assuming
it's accurate!) and you need to structure it into a logical sequence.
Note that this may well not follow the data flow.
	The information is now in the correct order for the user, what
else is needed? Not only has the information the user needs have to be
there, they have to be able to find it quickly and easily - here we're
looking at document design, navigation features etc.
	Finally (again part of doc design) we need to make the document
'appealing' - if it looks good, contains the relevant information and is
easy to use then it's more likely to BE used which, after all, is what
we want.

Damien Braniff | Technical Writer
damienb -at- asg -dot- com 

Technical Communications
ASG | asg.com

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8, Lagan Bank Road,
Belfast, N. Ireland BT1 3LR 
Tel:  +44 (0) 28.9072.3124
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