I have recently moved from book editing and communication into my new professional field - technical writing. My year as a technical writing student proved to be filled with technical knowledge but also insights about myself and how connected technical writing is to other professional fields.
Written by: Lena Öhrström
Technical terms and verb forms
CAD, topics, STE, and CCMS. Last October I had no idea what this was, but now I do! This means I have learnt a lot – about technical writing.
Before I started a class in technical writing, I thought I would do just fine with the knowledge and experience I already have. Words, text, information, and communication have always been my line of work. As an editor and communications officer, I have written many texts, but I have also worked with texts and input from other people. Hence, I’m used to considering the effect of different phrasings. Active verb forms and imperatives are kind of old friends of mine – and even more so as a technical writer.
Gaining and getting rid of
Of course, I did not join a class where I thought I would not learn anything. But to see clearly you often need some distance. It is not until after, when you use your knowledge, that you know you have gained it. Now it is after. And now I know I have gained very specific knowledge – about technical writing.
During the last year I have also become very aware of how much I enjoy getting rid of the “unnecessary stuff”. Just keeping the core. I have just not seen this so clearly before. To really see it I needed experience – of technical writing.
Concise and clear
At my latest job we put a lot of effort into making texts available for people with impairments like brain fog and lack of ability to concentrate. Our motto was: “What works for a person with a cognitive impairment works for everyone.” It needs to be short, concise, without flourishes, no words that can be misunderstood, no long, winding wordings where you get lost. In short: a little bit like technical writing.
informiQ helped clear the path
Technical writing is not just about writing though. It is also about technology.
And there have been moments when I wondered how to find my way through deliberately unclear input and thought this might be my Achilles’ heel. But how fortunate I was to do my internship at Informiq! I spent eight weeks with one of their customers. They had tangible machines that I could observe with my own eyes and generous, knowledgeable people who like to talk about their machines.
All of this is technical writing. So much more than I imagined.