OE1-1.2 Techniques of Technical Writing

What this is and why it exists

Technical writing is close to the opposite of what school essays reward. There is no suspense, no ornament, and the conclusion comes first.

One habit is worth more than all the others. Prefer the specific word to the abstract one, because the specific word is the one the reader can act on.

The vocabulary

• Abstract word — one naming a category or a quality rather than a thing or an event.
• Specific word — one naming what actually happened, with detail.
• Active voice — the subject performs the action.
• Passive voice — the action is described without necessarily naming who did it.
• Register — the level of formality and the conventions a kind of writing follows.
• Topic sentence — the sentence that tells a reader what a paragraph is about.
• Elegant variation — using different words for the same thing to avoid repetition.

The mental model

Start with the habit that matters most. Compare two sentences saying the same thing.

The first says component reliability was suboptimal. The second says the bearing failed after four hundred hours. The first is a category and a judgement. The second is a thing and a number. Only one of them lets a reader do anything. Order a different bearing, check the load, or look at the four hundred hour mark in the log.

Replacing an abstraction with a specific is the single most reliable way to improve a technical draft, and it is almost mechanical. Find the abstract nouns and ask what actually happened.

Word choice in this register means the plainest word that is precise. Long words do not make writing more technical, and reaching for them is the misconception to unlearn early. Use the technical term when a technical term is required, because precision demands it, and use an ordinary word everywhere else.

Technical writing accepts something general writing forbids. Repetition is a virtue here. Call the same component by the same name every time. In an essay, varying your words is good style. In a specification, it makes the reader wonder whether two names mean two things. Consistency beats variety wherever being misunderstood has a cost.

Sentence structure has one main lever and one main preference.

The lever is length. Long sentences are where technical prose usually goes wrong, and length is a symptom rather than the disease. A sentence grows long because it is carrying two or three ideas. Split it and the ideas separate, and the reader can follow each in turn.

The preference is the active voice. It names who did what. The passive hides the actor, and in a report that someone must act on, hiding the actor removes information. There are places where the passive is right, particularly where the actor is unknown or genuinely unimportant. It should be a choice rather than a habit.

The requisite for a usable sentence is one idea, in an order the reader can follow. Put the subject and the verb near the beginning. Put qualifications after the main statement rather than in front of it, so the reader knows what is being qualified before the qualification arrives.

Paragraphs are where structure becomes visible. A paragraph should have one clear first sentence saying what it is about, because that is what a skimming reader reads. Readers skim technical documents, always, and a paragraph with no clear opening sentence is a paragraph that will be skipped.

Keep paragraphs short. A page of unbroken text tells a reader there is no structure to navigate by. They will either read all of it slowly or none of it.

Planning before drafting is the habit this topic is really teaching. Decide what the reader needs, in what order, before writing sentences. Rearranging an outline costs minutes and rearranging finished prose costs hours.

What you should now be able to explain or do

Replace abstract statements with specific ones and say why that helps the reader. Choose the plainest precise word and resist long ones. Say why repetition is a virtue here. Split a long sentence by finding the ideas inside it. Write a paragraph with a topic sentence that survives skimming, and plan before drafting.

Check yourself