With the job market getting tougher by the day, there’s a rising belief among tech writers that their role is “too niche” and a “dead-end job”. I think that’s the wrong way of looking at our profession — at any profession. Let me cast aside that dark veil of pessimism and offer an alternative viewpoint, that of tech writing as a platform to other professions, one that lets you move laterally with just a bit of curiosity and courage.| passo.uno
Recommending books for technical writers that aren’t old technical manuals is hard. There are very few books on the craft of technical writing, a shortage that I find sharply ironic for a writers’ profession like ours. When I became a tech writer, the books that helped me the most were about other topics that make up the job, like English language, design, and the programmer’s mind. Let me share them with you.| passo.uno
Some technical writers in my network are genuinely worried about their professional future in the AI age. Will large language models take my job, they wonder. Are we going to be replaced by GPT, they ask in meetups and community forums. My short answer is “No”. My longer answer is “No, unless you reject the benefits of LLMs”. For my complete answer, keep reading this post.| passo.uno
Soon after publishing Tips for hiring your first technical writer, some readers kindly suggested to follow up with a post covering the previous step in the tech writing journey, that is, the realization that one needs a technical writer. As there seems to be a strong appetite for this kind of content, I’m going to spend some words to list what I think are the most egregious signs that your team, company, or product requires a technical writer (or a tech writing team).| passo.uno
I’ve been wondering for a while why I don’t see more blogs on technical writing, tech comms, and technical documentation. I’ve been in listening mode for years, and beyond Tom Johnson’s excellent blog, it’s hard to find more content around technical writing. I’ve some hypotheses as to why that’s happening, as well as a request: We should be blogging more about technical writing and tech comms.| passo.uno
I’ve already presented the gear I use at work. Here’s my list of favorite software tools for technical writing, the ones I couldn’t do without in my day-to-day routine. They mostly apply to a docs-as-code, software documentation setting. Notice that I’m not listing docs generators or markup languages on purpose, as we seldom get to choose them.| passo.uno
A few days ago I published a repository for the English Programming Language, a tongue-in-cheek parody of README files. I had a hunch and posted it on Hacker News at 3 AM. When I woke up, the repo was on the front page and already racked up 200 stars on GitHub. Not bad for a nerd joke. But then again, why would someone write humorous technical documentation?| passo.uno
There was this discussion at work regarding docs in products, so I sketched a diagram to illustrate the main types of embedded docs, and their place in the product writing continuum, from UX writing to technical writing.| passo.uno
A colleague asked me the other day what’s my favourite way of extracting information from subject-matter experts (SMEs). This is a big topic in technical writing, as most of our time at work is spent chasing engineers and project managers to get bits of information. My answer was “Be like Lieutenant Columbo”.| passo.uno