The most important features for creative and technical writers in word processing software, with a checklist so you can pick just the ones that matter to you.

Tweet Last fall, as I’ve said before, I had the opportunity to teach Technical Writing to a bunch of Computer Science students. It was what we called a “hybrid online course” — a Tuesday/Thursday class, but we only met in the classroom on Tuesdays. Then on Thursdays they would visit the class’s website, get the […]

Remember last week’s article about the shape of a document? Remember that hideous image growling out at you halfway down the scroll? Well, this week your assignment is to do one better.

Later this week, I’m going to spend a lot of time talking to the creative writers about poetry, and on Friday they’ll get to write sonnets. I wouldn’t expect sonnets out of my technical writers, but I still recommend that you take the time to read Thursday’s article, when it comes around. Poetry is language distilled, and technical writing is all about efficiency, brevity, and impact. The approaches are different, but the destination is the same.

So this week I want you to be poetic, too.

My first job out of college, I was a Technical Writer for a small manufacturer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that produced some of the world’s best fish finders. I spent several years writing user manuals for gadgets. Then I took a new job working for the Federal Aviation Administration, where I wrote maintenance instructions for the field technicians who service and maintain our nation’s long-range radars.