Technical Writing for Business People

Table of contents

1. Front Cover
2. Half-Title Page
3. BCS, THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT
4. Title Page
5. Copyright Page
6. Contents
7. List of figures
8. Author
9. Preface
10. 1. What is Technical Writing?
    1. The technical writer’s toolkit
    2. The most important thing you need as a technical writer
    3. Key takeaways
11. 2. Seven Steps to Heaven: the Technical Writing Cycle
    1. 1. Specification, audience and scope
    2. 2. Planning
    3. 3. Research and writing
    4. 4. Testing, reviewing and revision
    5. 5. Delivery
    6. 6. Evaluation and feedback
    7. 7. Revision, archiving or destruction
    8. Technical writing in a team
    9. A quick word about writing apps
    10. A quick word about formatting text
    11. Key takeaways
12. 3. Know Your Audience
    1. Who are you writing for?
    2. Personas in technical writing
    3. What do they already know?
    4. What do they need to know, and why?
    5. Where and when do they need to know it?
    6. Key takeaways
13. 4. Break it Down: the Importance of a Task-based Approach
    1. Break it down (but not too much)
    2. The other big benefit of a task-based approach
    3. Key takeaways
14. 5. Assume Nothing
    1. Making assumptions
    2. Assumptions and accessibility
    3. Junk the jargon, banish buzzwords and abolish acronyms
    4. Key takeaways
15. 6. Vanquish Vagueness
    1. Be precise
    2. Don’t leave wiggle room
    3. Be specific
    4. Key takeaways
16. 7. Don’t be Yourself
    1. The importance of clarity
    2. Key takeaways
17. 8. Stick to the Story
    1. 1. Long paragraphs
    2. 2. Dense blocks of text
    3. 3. Irrelevant or useless graphics
    4. 4. Poor punctuation
    5. 5. Too much information
    6. 6. Forgetting to include the ‘how’
    7. 7. Unclear navigation aids
    8. Key takeaways
18. 9. be Active: Why You should Avoid the Passive Voice and Weak Verbs
    1. Why weak words make writing worse
    2. Key takeaways
19. 10. Diagrams, Lists and Graphics
    1. Listy business
    2. Go with the flow (chart)
    3. Other kinds of charts
    4. Keep away from the clipart
    5. Good graphics
    6. Key takeaways
20. 11. Everybody Needs an Editor
    1. Let go of your ego
    2. What to look for when you’re editing
    3. Accuracy
    4. Simplicity
    5. Brevity
    6. Effectiveness
    7. Sheer tedium
    8. Key takeaways
21. 12. the Technical Writing House of Horrors
    1. When commas cost
    2. The conversion that cost a spaceship
    3. The ‘s’ that killed a company
    4. When xxx costs $$$
    5. The £52 million comma
22. Afterword
23. Index