Firstly, establish what you mean by "technical writer". It can encompass many different areas, from science communication through training & instructional design to simply churning out instructions by trial-and-error for software that has been written without any specifications as to how it should behave.
On 29/05/2011 3:37 PM, Charl wrote:
My first position grew out of a background of electronic engineering and IT. I liked writing, no-one else did, so much of the documentation was left/given to me. My current position involves taking "scientific software", reverse-engineering its behaviour by playing with it and reading the source code, and creating a user guide. Along the way, I log bugs about the software's behaviour and usability. (Since I have an overview of the software as a whole, it's easy to to spot GUI and behavioural inconsistencies.)Hi Austechies! I have a few questions (okay, a LOT of questions) for all you experienced technical writers out there: What was your first technical writing position? How did you get it? What sort of writing samples, if any, did you show?
Electronic engineering, post-grad cert in online education, TESOL, Auslan. So, technical stuff and languages. I'm self-taught in HTML, CSS, C#, Delphi, database design and a few other things.What is your education? Did you train specifically in technical writing? Have you pursued additional training?
You need to be technical: to be able to understand the domain in which you are writing. You need to have technical competence in at least one current documentation technology. For example, you should know XML and/or Docbook and/or DITA,and why (or why not) you would use them. HTML (especially HTML5 & CSS3). You need to know Microsoft Word (since your employer will probably have it.What sort of skills do you think a technical writer needs?
You need an awareness of a lot of other current technologies as well, even if you don't fully understand them.
You need to be able to convince people what they need before they're aware that they need it. This applies to software or product requirements (if you're lucky enough to be there at the start of a project), software or product behaviour (GUI look & feel etc and yes I'm banging on about software behaviours because my current gig is full of odd things...), documentation types, delivery mechanisms, review processes and so on.
You need to be able to find out the real audience for your documents, not the "apparent" audience of marketing, branding, in-house reviewers and software developers. They might approve a document, but never use it. Find a real user somewhere, secretly.
I don't want to add too much more to this as I don't know your background. What is your background? Is this you? http://au.linkedin.com/pub/charlotte-brogden/31/a24/446
Do a good job on a small project. Get noticed (and preferably paid). Ignore the negativity on this list. I'm old enough to be as cynical as the rest but still believe there is beauty in the world.What are the best ways a newcomer could establish themselves as a technical writer?
"Doing a good job" has an entire constellation of concepts behind it, involving some of what I wrote above.
Final question: why do you ask, and where do you want to go with being a "technical writer"?
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