Leah K. Guidelines for Writing Technical Instructions

The title, Guidelines for Writing Technical Instructions, sounds scary, right? Well it doesn't have to be. Chances are someday you might have to use this stuff someday! One of the most common and one of the most common uses of technical writing is instructions. Remember all those step-by-step explanations of how to do things like creating something, operating something, and fixing something. I sometimes have been infuriated with poorly written instructions, causing more harm than good! That is the result of horribly written technical instructions. I would hate for any of my readers to fall into that fate. Let's jump right into the guidelines!


1. Determining Preliminaries
-This includes defining your audience and readers. Determine if you consider them experts, technicians or non specialists. In other words, if I were writing instructions for using facebook for a group of elderly people, I probally would have to start with "press glowing button to turn on computer."
-An important consideration is how many tasks there are in the procedure you are writing instructions for. Some instructions have only a single task, but have many steps within that single task. I have put together a desk where there was over 50 steps! A nice way to handle this is to group similar and related steps into phases, and start renumbering the steps at each new phase.

2.Common Sections of Instructions
Rather than writing it all out, you can see exactly how the sections should be lined up! Enjoy!


3. IntroductionThe first section needs to indicate a few things to the readers.
-The specific task that will be explained.
-The level of expertise the reader needs.
-General idea of what the process accomplishes.
-Indicate when the instructions should not be used.
-Provide general warnings. (Ex: assembly of a electric fence might indicate a shocking factor.)

4. Equipment and supplies
Most instructions include a list of materials and equipment you will need to complete a task. I, like most people, skip over the materials and right to the procedures. I usually find myself having to run to the store in the middle of the project for missing materials!

5. Choose A Step Style
Fixed order steps are steps that need to be presented in the order they need to be performed. Those are my favorite. Variable order can be performed in any order. Nested steps are lengthy processes that need to be broken into subsets using letter and numbers. Every once in a while I run into "stepless" steps where the information is scattered everywhere.

6. Make it Easier for the Reader
Use graphics and picture to guide the readers! We all know that a picture is a thousand words, and a picture is the best suggestion I can give anyone on writing technical instructions. Also, format your instructions with bolding to provide emphasis on certain important notices.

This is an example of a person using interactive media to create technical instructions on Micrsoft Word.

Could technical writing be any easier? Well now it is easy for you and your readers!


http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/instrux.html