It is easy to break a thief in the mountains, but difficult to break a thief in the heart — Wang Yangming
Before we start the course, let’s talk about some of the misconceptions you may encounter in technical writing that can change your thinking about technical writing.
1. We technical people can’t write articles. That’s operations
Writing is a tool for us to express our opinions to the world. It belongs to everyone. You write a sentence is also writing; You write a paragraph is also writing; When you start writing, you are already writing.
Don’t be afraid of writing. Writing is a necessary skill for us. In the workplace, we often write weekly and annual reports, and at home, we occasionally write a speech to our wife.
Get serious about writing, and start writing!
2. Technical writing is not what you write, it’s what you do
It is understandable that many programmers do not pay much attention to writing. After all, they are so busy with their work that they have no time to write. However, lack of time does not mean that you can think that “content is important, writing is not important”.
First of all, writing is also a part of content. When you say that content is important and writing is not important, you separate writing from content, which is a mistake in the beginning.
Secondly, it is true that we should not ask ordinary programmers to write as professional writers do, but it does not mean that you can completely disregard writing, or even feel ashamed of writing well, and think that you are not a serious “programmer”. Writing is related to everyone, nothing to do with the profession, each of us can not do very well in writing, but we can make their own writing in their own limit, to achieve the best.
Finally, the stand or fall of writing often appears in modifiers, between statements on the process of handing down close to judge, this makes the article appeared a lot of content has nothing to do with the core thought itself, is let words appear some “water”, however, can let your article readability greatly improved, no longer obscure.
So, if you want to write well, first of all, don’t refuse to write.
3. A technical article is a good article as long as there are many dry things
Dry goods are the yardstick by which we often judge an article. For articles with more dry goods, we will praise them, and for articles with less dry goods, we will spit on them.
However, before you write, you need to think about your audience first and then lay out your dry goods.
Articles for senior engineers and junior engineers have different requirements for dry goods, and if you mismatch the requirements, no matter how much dry goods you have, readers will laugh at you.
A typical example is that when you need to look for beginners, dry unusually rich official documentation may not be a good choice, too much dry brings the enormous amount of information makes a beginner in the beginning the whole channel is occupied full, unable to the content of study, at the same time, will also give him enormous study pressure in the beginning. Personally written tutorials and video tutorials, on the other hand, separate the core content and arrange the content so that beginners can easily learn the content.
When we write an article, however, should not blindly only for better readability to reduce the amount of dry goods, so, in the face of a beginner, you in addition to simplify as much as you can that you can offer the information, also need to balance the amount of dry goods, this part, I usually in the form of reference links, read on to complete, and help the reader better to learn about the content of what they have learned.
4. Eye-catching headlines aren’t good headlines
The headline is just a tool. It’s not the headline that’s really annoying, it’s the person behind the headline.
We all hate clickbait, but we shouldn’t hate a good headline. The main behavior of the clickbait party is that “the title of the post is grossly exaggerated, and the content of the post is usually completely irrelevant or irrelevant to the title”, leaving us with high expectations and subsequent disappointment. But from a functional point of view, their title does its job and draws people in.
In the era of abundant information, we tend to choose what we want to read through the information stream. At this time, we cannot choose by reading every article, which is not selection but traversal. At this point, a good title can help you better attract readers to come in and make your content stand out from many articles.
We should make good use of the function of title to attract readers, so as to select more possible readers for our article.
5. Writing is just writing
Writing is not just writing. Writing is the last step in writing.
The complete process of writing should be “input” – “processing” – “output”. The core problem of your bad writing is not “output”, but input. Without massive input, it is difficult for you to obtain sustained and high-intensity output. Without intermediate treatment, all you can write is a running list. The input is reading, you need a lot of reading; Processing is thought, you need to first in the brain thinking collision, find out their own ideas in the reasonable and unreasonable. Output is written, the results of processing into a lengthy text.
If you have any thoughts on this article, please leave a comment below, or scan the QR code and join knowledge Planet in the discussion
