Technical Writing – Combine Short Sentences to Avoid Choppy Delivery

© 2010 Ugur Akinci

Most of the time you’ll hear that short is good in technical writing and long is bad. That’s true in general.

But like everything else, this rule has an exception as well.

If you write in too many short sentences cascading one after the other, the readers will have a hard time reading and understanding your document.

For example:

BAD technical writing: “Press the button. A screen will display. The display will have the title VOLTAGE CONFIGURATION SCREEN.” (Not concise)

GOOD technical writing: “Press the button to display the VOLTAGE CONFIGURATION SCREEN.” (Concise)

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BAD technical writing:“Make sure the configuration module is displayed first. Then find the Maximum Voltage field. Enter 120 Volts as a value into the Maximum Voltage Field. Once done with that, find the TBD radio button. Clear the TBD radio button.”

GOOD technical writing:“When the configuration module is displayed, type 120 Volts into the Maximum Voltage field and clear the TBD radio button.”