Recently I’ve been spending some good hours wrapping my head around a few high-tech writing assignments. It is an art form, breaking down the nitty gritty into a digestible and comprehensible form. And I just stumbled across this helpful post by Daniel P. Dern. Originally featured in Skyward’s blog: Content Standard, Mar 17, 2014.  [Repost!!]

—–

Tips for Online Writing about Complex Technology

by Daniel P. Dern

Online writing about technology poses challenges for writers, particularly when your audience includes a mix of up-to-speed professionals and clueless newbies.

To be fair, this doesn’t just apply to technology writing. Whether you’re writing about baseball, superhero comic books, or competitive square dancing, you’re often dealing with jargon and context that requires explanations. And when we as writers are familiar with something, we often lose track of the fact that it can be incomprehensible to a newcomer.

Online writing emphasizes clarity and conciseness. Whereas books or long-form articles have room for introductions, definitions, glossaries or appendices, most online readers want something they can digest easily. When writing about technology, you need to decide when something requires an in-depth explanation, or whether you can give it a cursory definition and move on.

Here are some suggestions to help your articles become clearer to the reader—and possibly easier to write—without unduly adding to your word count.

Name and Explain

“The first time you mention something—particularly if it’s key to the article’s subject—give its full name, then the nickname or abbreviation you will subsequently use.”

Make it Easy to Track Who’s Saying What

“The first time you mention a person, give his or her full name, title, company/organization, and company URL.”

“Avoiding leaning on “he said” or “she said,” because it can confuse the reader if you don’t take time to re-identify the name of the speaker in a paragraph.”

Defining Newer Information

“…readers will appreciate it if you make sure they know just what something is, what it does, how it fits in to the story, and why it’s important.”

“Another trick to describe something new and unfamiliar is by making a short comparison to something your readers should be familiar with, like saying, “RAM is like the blackboard or workbench where work-in-progress is, while storage, e.g., hard drive, solid-state drive, or USB flash drive, are the boxes and file cabinets where you put stuff away.”

…Read the original article and more: Tips for Online Writing about Complex Technology, via Content Standard by SkyDrive.