User Guides, Manuals, and Technical Writing

This book is intended for anyone whose job involves writing formal documentation. It is aimed at non-native speakers of English, but should also be of use for native speakers who have no training in technical writing.

Technical writing is a skill that you can learn and this book outlines some simple ideas for writing clear documentation that will reflect well on your company, its image and its brand.

The book has four parts:

Structure and Content: Through examples, you will learn best practices in writing the various sections of a manual and what content to include.

Clear Unambiguous English: You will learn how to write short clear sentences and paragraphs whose meaning will be immediately clear to the reader.

Layout and Order Information: Here you will find guidelines on style issues, e.g., headings, bullets, punctuation and capitalization.

Typical Grammar and Vocabulary Mistakes: This section is divided alphabetically and covers grammatical and vocabulary issues that are typical of user manuals.

Part I. Structure and Content of a Manual.- Title, Table of Contents, About, Introduction, Product Overview, What's in the Box.- Key Features.- Installation: Getting Started.- Instructions: Procedures.- Troubleshooting.- Warnings and Recommendations.- Updates, Warranty, Contact Details.- Part II. Writing Clearly, Concisely and Unambiguously.- Writing from a Reader Perspective.- Avoiding Redundancy and Long Sentences.- Word Order.- Terminology.- Avoiding Ambiguity.- Automatic Translation.- Part III. Layout and Order of Information.- Layout.- Headings.- Punctuation.- Capitalization.- Abbreviations and Acronyms.- Bullets.- Figures, Tables and Captions.- Dates and Numbers.- Giving Examples.- Referencing.- Spelling.- Part IV. Typical Mistakes.- Comparisons.- Definite Article (The), Indefinite Article (A, An), One.- Genitive.- Infinitive vs. Gerund.- Negotiations.- Passive vs. Active.- Pronouns.- Vocabulary.