Technical Writing ToolBox

A Blog on Technical Writing

Tag Archives: Writing Tip

7 causes of Inefficient Writing

8 Comments Posted by Gurpreet Singh on June 7, 2012

Few weeks back I talked about three external factors that gives birth to inefficient documents. Writers either have no or very less control over these factors. However, this is not always the case. In fact, usually a writer makes documents inefficient if they fail to remove common writing mistakes from their work. Let’s look at seven factors that cause inefficient writing even when the content is technically accurate and the grammar is perfect:

Top 3 Serial Killers of a Good Document

8 Comments Posted by Gurpreet Singh on May 17, 2012

Don’t kill me- says your document!

Whether you are writing a user’s guide, online help, or an installation guide, you always strive to convey a meaningful message to your intended audience.

However, the message often gets diluted and becomes meaningless due to a number of reasons. Of course, a writer may not put enough efforts in making a message meaningful but most of the time several external factors contribute in killing the effectiveness of a document. Let’s look at the top three factors that kill a good document:

7 Useful Insights about How People Read Documentation

5 Comments Posted by Gurpreet Singh on May 3, 2012

Reading is a primary form of communication for most people and they have different habits of reading. Not surprisingly, different people read product documentation in different ways. But how do they read and why should we care about their reading habits?

A writer writes with a purpose. This purpose gives shapes to their thoughts and allows them to convert their body-less thoughts to words. A strong correlation exists between a writer’s purpose and use of the document.

Getting Rid of Misplaced Modifiers

7 Comments Posted by Gurpreet Singh on April 29, 2012

Modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that restricts or provide additional information about other words, phrases, or clauses. Modifiers can be adjectives or adverbs. Modifiers that appear before the head are called premodifiers and modifiers that appear after the head are called postmodifiers.

We have a certain amount of freedom in deciding where to place our modifiers in a sentence:

We rowed the boat vigorously.
We vigorously rowed the boat.
Vigorously we rowed the boat.

Make your Sentences Slim (by removing 35 Wordy Phrases)

10 Comments Posted by Gurpreet Singh on April 17, 2012

Photo Credit: OnBloggingWell.com

One of the easiest way to achieve conciseness in your writing is by removing wordy phrases. Wordy Phrases are long sentences that can be replaced by a single word (or few words) without changing the meaning of a sentence.
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