Anthrobytes Media, LLC

Technical writing consists of several skills at the same time, not the least of which is the writing part of technical writing. And in the product led growth environment, the writing matters a lot at every touchpoint in the customer journey.

Good technical writing involves skill with the language you’re writing in. That seems basic, but it’s more complex than you were taught to write in high school, and so you know all you need to know. And I’ve taught people who thought that. They know better when we’re done!

Good technical writing, skilled technical writing also includes understanding:

• How people read and understand words.
• The business issues around technical content.

What do I mean by that?

How people read and understand words

People are not reading your product led growth technical writing because they can’t wait to see how it all ends. The technical writing genre creates technical content to help people understand the information they need. And then accomplish the tasks they need to get done.

What that means is technical content must be created such that it can get into the heads of busy people under cognitive load so they can understand and take action. This is not easy, but we know from research some key ways to accomplish this task.

Ways to get skilled technical content

1. Write at a 5th to 7th grade level. Not because people are unable to read, but because this lower reading level is cognitively easier to understand, remember, and act on. Can people understand technical content written to a college level? Of course. Do they want to? No, because that requires a lot of their brain and a lot of their focus. Who wants to set up their new Swiffer by reading a college text?^*
   • What are you doing to your customers in your product led growth content that makes them abandon tasks? Is the writing too hard at that point of need? Reduce the technical writing level and see if that changes the abandon rate.
2. Avoid unneeded words. Simple to say, difficult to do. How to start? Write present tense. Notice these sentences are written in short, easy to read sentences that leave no room for confusion about what I mean.
   • So why present tense? Because it cuts extra words, like “will” from the sentence. Will also adds potential confusion as to when something happens. Right away? Later? Tomorrow? When I teach technical writing courses, the first thing I teach is to write in present tense. And most people find it challenging to make the shift because the present tense has never been an issue before. No one taught them.
   • Additionally, kill off “wish”. We don’t wish in technical content. We just don’t. From Dictionary.com: to want; desire; long for (usually followed by an infinitive or a clause). Do your customers long for anything in your product? Is that something you actually want them to feel? Customers want to do things, they don’t long to do things.

Junior technical writers create future tense content that has people longing for things. I don’t care how long they’ve been technical writers, they’re junior writers.

Business issues around technical content

And then there’s the many business issues around technical writing. The primary one I start with is the cost of localizing to other languages. That’s the one that catches the C level’s attention. Even if you’re not localizing right now, you probably are in the future. And it’s too late to fix it then.

On average, translation costs $.25 per word, per language. Some are more, some are less, but on average, this is what every word costs to translate.

Now, let’s review the ways junior writers create technical content. Every time they use the word “will”, it literally costs a quarter for each language. Use it 4 times in a paragraph, and that’s 1 US dollar. So if they do that in technical content all the time? Your translation costs have skyrocketed for no business or information reason.

So that’s what lazy technical content does–it artificially inflates content development/publishing costs.

Technical writing examples

Let’s look at an example of real world technical writing and how to fix. I’m changing the technical writing examples slightly to hide the origins.

Example

Prerequisites <– 11th grade vocabulary

• You will have completed all of the steps in Add a New Banana for each apple you wish to deploy. ← mixed future and present tense, and we’re wishing. Flesch-Kincaid grade level 8th grade. US$ 5.25 to translate to 1 language.

Better:

Before you start

• You must complete all the steps in Add a New Banana for each apple you want to deploy. ← Flesch-Kincaid grade level 7th grade. US$ 5.25 to translate to 1 language.

Even better:

Before you start

• Complete all the steps in Add a New Banana for each apple to deploy. ← Flesch-Kincaid grade level 6th grade. 14 words total, US$ 4.25 to translate to 1 language.

I reduced the reading level by 2 grades and saved US$ 1.00 for this change alone.

This matters

While my example is small, think about what this means to your product led growth content. Reducing the reading level, as you saw, isn’t hard. It takes some time and a small effort.

But it makes the content easier for people to read, understand, and act on. And when we add in the cost of translation, there really isn’t a choice–skilled technical writing is the winner.

What are your junior technical writers writing? And what’s it costing you in feature abandon rates and translation? How is it impacting every touchpoint on the customer journey?

And of course, we can help your staff move from junior writing to skilled technical writing with our technical writing classes.

*Big shout out to Swiffer, BTW. I set up mine with no instructions to clean up the tomato juice I spilled on the floor while I was processing the fresh tomatoes from my garden. Intuitive design for the win!