Are you an engineer and tasked with writing technical documentation? Effective communication is at the heart of every successful organization, but producing the docs and manuals can be daunting. In the end, you inspire to be a creative developer, not a writer. Yet, here are some little tricks that can ease your writing process and save your company big. Either because your content will be understood better or by saving costs if your documentation needs to be translated later. Learn more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-tips-writing-better-technical-documentation-thomas-voss/

1. PREFER SIMPLE
SENTENCE STRUCTURE
TIP 1
Follow Subject+Verb+Object
Aim to avoid nominalization (development of s.th. develop s.th.)
& light verbs (make a decision decide)
CONSISTENT
TERMINOLOGY &
STANDARDIZED
EXPRESSIONS
TIP 4
Active
PAssive
USE BULLET POINTS
TIP 3
KEEP YOUR
LAYOUT SIMPLE
TIP 5
Breaks down long sentences with enumerations
Better manageable
can be changed (retranslated) individually
without editing the entire sentence
USE ACTIVE vs PASSIVE
TIP 2
Active sentences are action-oriented
Use repetition
in technical
documents
Use running text
(translated text will
differ in length!)
Use caption instead of
text-in-picture (easy to
maintain/translate)
Use PDF as
output file only!
Varying terms/
text segments
may confuse the
reader
Easy to
maintain/
reuse
Utilizes
CAT tools &
glossaries
better
Avoid filler words & nested sentences
Address the reader directly
DO YOU NEED YOUR DOCUMENT TRANSLATED?
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BETTER TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
TIPS FOR
5
(and Saving Translation Costs)
Word
count
Translation
costs
Word
count
Translation
costs
Information
absorption