22 Questions to Ask Before Writing a Technical Manual

The traditional book format (“codex”) is under serious attack both from online and ebook platforms, and structured documents that have “topic” as their most basic information unit instead of the “page.” However, I believe the book format will be with us for a long time to come while XML-based non-book formats continue to make important…

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Technical Book Review — "Creating Technical Manuals: A Step-by-Step Approach to Writing User-Friendly Instructions"

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Creating Technical Manuals: A Step-By-Step Approach to Writing User-Friendly Instructions by Gerald Cohen and Donald H. Cunningham was printed back in 1984. So like most pre-Internet era technical books, it’s outdated in terms of visual content. Its page layout suggestions, for example, shows how rapidly the technical communication field has developed…

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Two Different Types of Software User Manuals in Technical Writing

© Ugur Akinci In technical writing, there are two different but related types of software user manuals and I call them “Button Guides” and “Procedural Tutorials”. A FUNCTION or GUI INTERFACE MANUAL explains what each “button”, or the graphic user interface (GUI) element that one sees on a screen, is all about and how does…

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