In your day-to-day work, you might find that there are times when you need to provide a client with documentation that walks them through a process or teaches them how to do something they may be unfamiliar with.
Software manuals tend to come in two flavors-dull and unintelligible. This has led directly and inexorably to RTFM!, the rallying cry of technical support people everywhere. Yet twenty years of yelling at callers to Read The Freaking Manual (or words to that effect) hasn't helped. Fixing the manual does. Follow these five easy steps, and your company will start saving big-time on the cost of customer support.
Looking for tips on writing user manuals? A lot of user manuals will leave people stumped therefore not solving the problem the manual is supposed to solve.
The process of producing a technical manual usually is a team effort. In most situations, a Technical Communicator is only given one portion of the whole project. Other parts go to the Graphical Designer, Editor and such. The "whole picture" is usually only seen by the Project Manager.
This handbook will teach you how to create everything from manuals to work instructions. We'll help you avoid the most common pitfalls of tech writing, from poor planning to outdated publishing.
A successful user manual provides users with quick answers to the questions that they might have about a particular product. Users searching for information don't want to know about the latest and greatest features of a product. Users want to know how to complete tasks. Technical writing focuses on user tasks and the concepts that support the tasks.
In your day-to-day work, you might find that there are times when you need to provide a client with documentation that walks them through a process or teaches them how to do something they may be unfamiliar with.
Software manuals tend to come in two flavors-dull and unintelligible. This has led directly and inexorably to RTFM!, the rallying cry of technical support people everywhere. Yet twenty years of yelling at callers to Read The Freaking Manual (or words to that effect) hasn't helped. Fixing the manual does. Follow these five easy steps, and your company will start saving big-time on the cost of customer support.
Looking for tips on writing user manuals? A lot of user manuals will leave people stumped therefore not solving the problem the manual is supposed to solve.
The process of producing a technical manual usually is a team effort. In most situations, a Technical Communicator is only given one portion of the whole project. Other parts go to the Graphical Designer, Editor and such. The "whole picture" is usually only seen by the Project Manager.
This handbook will teach you how to create everything from manuals to work instructions. We'll help you avoid the most common pitfalls of tech writing, from poor planning to outdated publishing.
A successful user manual provides users with quick answers to the questions that they might have about a particular product. Users searching for information don't want to know about the latest and greatest features of a product. Users want to know how to complete tasks. Technical writing focuses on user tasks and the concepts that support the tasks.
