Qualities of good technical information

A good document is a piece of information which help the reader to accomplish goal easily. Rahul Karn

How to measure the quality of the document? How will I understand if my technical document is of top quality? These are a few questions which every technical writer ask to themselves or come across.

One simple method, some tools give scorecard, readability score etc. So, to score well you must give a look at what parameters they consider giving you the score and start working to mastering those skills.

In this post, we have touched the subject very briefly to give you a few pointers. It is recommended to develop a checklist and detail guideline as per your documentation requirements.

To qualify as good technical documents which can help the user to accomplish goal easily documents must have the following qualities:

• Easy to use
• Easy to understand
• Easy to FInd

What should be the qualities of good technical writing? We can measure the following parameters to establish it

• Grammer, style, and language (Easy to understand)
• Complete, clear, and correct Content (Easy to use)
• Topic/chapter organization (Easy to find)
• Correct use of visuals and media (Easy to understand and find)
• Retrievability (Easy to find)
• Cost effective (For stakeholders 🙂

To qualify for being a good technical document the minimum qualities required are given below. Many writers have penned their view on a good technical document, here are my two cent.:

These are very high-level points which need to be breakdown further. If any document meet these parameters it is assumed micro parts are taken care of qualities of good technical writing

Accurate

• Accuracy is the most important of the lot when it comes to qualities of good technical writing.
• Correct information.Many contracts have been lost just because of too many factual mistakes in the documentation.
• Get your drafts reviewed by people whose review is meaningful.
• Technical writing doesn’t allow to write your opinion, it is about facts. The facts should be clear irrespective of the kind of report: favourable or unfavourable.
• There should not be any false stories because it will question your credibility.

Complete

• Don’t give an overview of procedures, if users need minute detail.
• Editing.
• Proofreading.

Click to read the difference between Editing and Proofreading.

Consistent

• Anytime you use a different word or term to refer to something you’ve already called by another name, you risk confusing the readers. There should not be any ambiguity and every sentence should have a single meaning.

Clear

• Write clearly
• Use simple words and short sentences (KISS-Keep it simple)
• Clarity in the writing

Useful

• Is it easy to learn?
• Is it efficient to use?
• Can a user recover quickly from errors?
• Is it easy to remember what to do?
• Is it fun to use?
• Does my document make it easy to find the information the user needs? (index, TOC) If the software has less-than-optimal usability, the documentation must try to make up for it.
• Documentation must also be tested.

Attractive

• The document should be attractive to the eye. Effective use of visuals, gifs and media can do wonder.
• Readers resist reading what they don’t like to look at.
• Correct fonts, paragraph length, and styling can increase readability.

 Navigation & Search

• The topics should be easily searchable.
• Readers must have the comfort to navigate easily in a document.
• If you are writing for search engines you must follow the google parameters for ranking.

Recommended read-

Related Links:

5 best ways to provide writing samples

NASA’s list of “Weak Phrases” for the technical documents

Screen Capturing Tools