Andrew Plato's "Ten Rules of Technical Writing"

Andrew Plato is perhaps the funniest technical writer in captivity: that's partly because he's no longer doing a lot of technical writing (I've been told that the sense of humour grows back after a while). Here are a pair of Top Ten lists he wrote for the Tech Writer's mailing list. First, the "serious" one.

To be a good tech writer:

1. You understand or are willing to learn the subject matter.
2. You have no emotional attachments to your work. You see it as product that needs to be perfected, not an expression of yourself.
3. You ask relevant, probing questions and listen to the answers.
4. Prioritize your time. Focus on what is most important: content.
5. Answer the 5 Golden Questions:
1. What is it?
2. What does it do?
3. What is its purpose?
4. How does it work (or how does it do what it is supposed to do)?
5. Why is it relevant?
6. Master your environment and information. If you act like a cog in a machine, you will be treated and respected accordingly. Take control of the process. Use it to your advantage.
7. Demonstrate your expertise. Prove your knowledge.
8. Good writing is 5-10% fonts, styles, and grammar and 90-95% brain-numbing, keyboard-pecking, intellectually draining drudgery. If this ratio tilts too high to the fonts and styles side, you're probably not focusing on the right things.
9. Results are more important than plans.
10. Criticize things you don't know about. Live in a swamp and be three dimensional. Get all excited and go to a yawning festival. Go into a closet and suck eggs.

Apparently near the end of the list, he stopped prescribing what should be the tech writer Zen ideal and started talking about how real tech writers work. . .

The "real" list is more descriptive than prescriptive. This list was inspired by a long, long, long, tedious, long, long, boring, long, long discussion on the Tech Writers mailing list which devolved into a mud-slinging contest between the pro-STC and anti-STC factions:

10. Develop a style guide. First thing make sure you get every possible style perturbation figured out. This is very important.

9. Write a comprehensive documentation plan. Don't skimp here. You need to plan out every last detail of your documents. I usually allow 5 to 10 days to design and write the plan. Make sure you follow all your styles.

8. Single-source everything. There is simply no excuse for not using the latest single-sourcing systems. These can dramatically cut down on writing time and really make you more productive.

7. Hold weekly meetings, with everybody. Use this time to express your issues about management, projects, and levels of respect. Break out into cross-functional teams to form consensus on how to more effectively leverage your team synergies.

6. Get specs. Don't even think of starting work without detailed specifications on exactly what you should be doing.

5. Set expectations. Require detailed written expectations from management. Point out any deviation from these expectations.

4. Join the National Writers Union: This is the best place for fellow writers to get together and talk about employment issues. And when you get into trouble, the NWU can lend a hand and help you suck the life our of your employer.

3. Get the best tools: Make sure you spend ample time evaluating, cross-evaluation, and double-crossed evaluating tools and technologies. No plug-in or code snippet it too small. Document your evaluations and distribute these via executable files to everybody in your organization.

2. Remain Writer-focused: Don't let your company encourage you to learn about technologies. Remember, a good writer can document anything without knowing about it. Use your SMEs wisely and make sure you focus on what is important: fonts, styles, and communication.

1. Join STC: Devote yourself to this outstanding organization. The services it offers technical writers is truly remarkable. From seminars to lunch-and-learns, there is virtually no end to the valuable resources STC offers technical communicators. Make sure you also only work with those people that are also STC members!