{"id":75,"date":"2007-01-13T15:37:34","date_gmt":"2007-01-13T15:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/13\/how-technical-writing-sucks-the-five-sins\/"},"modified":"2007-01-13T15:51:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-13T15:51:29","slug":"how-technical-writing-sucks-the-five-sins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/13\/how-technical-writing-sucks-the-five-sins\/","title":{"rendered":"How technical writing sucks: The five sins"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was commenting to my friend Rob<\/a> recently that I think one of the things I need to really improve at is my technical writing. It’s something I think Rob is quite good at as are Ian<\/a> and Justin<\/a> and it really is kind of cool having those guys around to learn from. I do find myself reading a lot of their work … not surprising given that we work together…<\/p>\n

It does frustrate me when I read something they’ve written, or others outside of work like Alan<\/a>, and I wonder whether I could have made the same point as succinctly or eloquently or even as effectively. Now, rather mischievously, I could just say that those guys are way older than me and have had far more practice and experience at it … but I think that would be … disingenuous at best … a lame excuse for not trying harder myself … but hey I’m definitely younger and better looking than them \ud83d\ude09 I just know that I’m not as a good at writing. I think it’s because, just with any skill, you have to work at it, you have to practise at it in order to get better, and I haven’t really been doing that.<\/p>\n

I’ve been having a relaxed weekend so far and have been catching on some reading. Came across this wonderful little article by Amy Hoy<\/a>, whose blog I’ve been following<\/a> for a while. Amy very succinctly describes herself as a designer-turned-interface-developer, <\/em>which rather belies how good I think she is at it. Amy has a wonderfully engaging style of writing and whilst I don’t always agree with what she says (sorry!) whatever she writes is almost always great food for thought! \ud83d\ude09 She often makes me laugh, for example when I read here blog entry entitled “Are writers better women?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Her article about the five sins, is a fun read but I think what she identifies as the sins [losing the reader<\/em>, making the reader feel stupid<\/em>, failing to stick <\/em>, being a total bore <\/em>and not providing much needed context]<\/em> are all indicative of some of the kinds of problems my own technical writing often suffers from. Anyway I think it provides a useful set of criteria for me to try to assess my work with, I think I’m going to try and use it like that to see if it begins to help me evolve my own style … one that I feel more comfortable with. If its an area you think you need to improve at then do read her article, who knows you might find it useful too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was commenting to my friend Rob recently that I think one of the things I need to really improve at is my technical writing. It’s something I think Rob is quite good at as are Ian and Justin and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,19,20],"tags":[382,399,400],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-talis","category-usability","tag-personal","tag-talis","tag-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}