Technical Writing Introduction

If you've stumbled upon this site, you are no doubt planning (or at least contemplating) starting a career as a technical writer. First, let us start off by saying that it's tough to make a living doing technical writing. It's a competitive industry, and real success will require hard work, perseverance, and maybe a little luck. What we've tried to do on this site is compile useful and objective information that will help you launch your technical writing career. Many of the articles are geared towards work-at-home technical writers, but much of the information will be relevant to full-timers as well. Some of the articles contain information that is quite general, so you might have to do some further research if you want to find out more about a highly specific subject like how to format a table of contents for a user manual or how graphics included with assembly instructions should be labeled.

We've done our best to organize our database of technical writing articles into categories, and we hope our efforts will make it easier for you to navigate the site. In the first section, you'll find vital introductory information that will tell you exactly what technical writing is and whether a technical writing career would be a good fit for your interests, skills, and personality. Section 2 will tell you about technical writing certification options and what you can expect to earn as a technical writer, while section 3 deals with perhaps the most important aspect of the biz - finding work. Next, there's a section that will tell you more about the most common types of documents you will be asked to develop as a technical writer. Then, we discuss exactly what it takes to produce an outstanding piece of technical writing. The last section deals with how to improve your craft, which should be an ongoing goal for every technical writer.

We hope you'll find something in these articles that will help you launch a successful career as a technical writer. At the very least, we hope you'll learn something about the industry that you didn't know before. Have fun, work hard, enjoy the journey, and keep writing!