White Paper Pundit

Ok, so most technical writing isn’t bedtime reading (unless you are an insomniac), but there should be some flow and overarching organization to what you write.

Infoworld, one the top news publications in the techology industry, recently published an interesting article on tips that tech writers can follow to improve their white paper writing skills and make their content more appealing to their readers.

Several of the tips that were featured include:

1. Focus on communicating – The platinum rule of the written word is that you aren’t writing for you, you are writing to communicate with the reader.

2. Written technical communication is forever – White papers are stored for future reference. Are the sentences grammatically correct, relatively easy to read, and written with standard vocabularies? What you write and how you write it will be stored online forever, so make sure it doesn’t have mistakes.

3. Even in email - same as above. You don’t know who your messages will be forwarded to.

4. Tell a story – Your reader should have a clear sense of the direction you are headed and what it is that you want them to do when they finish.

5. Keep looking for feedback – There’s only one test that really matters: when your audience understands your information and is moved to act in accordance with your goals.

The article ends with a poignant thought about this issue of receiving feedback:

Think about Caruso, probably the greatest tenor in history, who at the height of his career as the star of the Metropolitan Opera conscientiously took voice lessons to improve his singing and acting on stage. If you are a better technologist than Caruso was a singer, maybe you don’t need feedback. Otherwise seek it out and treasure it.

Certainly words to live by…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under White Paper Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.