Technical Writer

A reader asked about qualifications in technical writing on another blog on this site—Qualifications for Technical Writers—and I thought it interesting enough for new topic.

The reader asked “why do we need to accomplish qualification in technical writing” and this could mean any of three things for me.

• Why do you need a degree in technical writing to be a technical writer?
• What do you get out of a technical writing degree?
• What subjects should you cover in a technical writing degree?

Why do you need a degree in technical writing to be a technical writer?

You don’t. In fact you don’t need a degree at all to do the work. You need to be able to write. You need a good grasp of grammar and spelling. You need project management skills. You need to meet deadlines, and be able to organise your time. You need to be able to do research and take information from multiple sources and translate it into something that your end user can understand.

Having said that, however, technical writing is a professional white collar job and entry level for this type of job is generally a degree of some kind. Nowadays, unless you are very lucky or have had a lot of experience, you are unlikely to even get an interview if you don’t have that piece of paper, and it’s only in the last couple of years that employers have specifically started asking for writers with tech writing qualifications. Until then, pretty much any degree would do.

Here in Australia dedicated technical writing qualifications are relatively new. They are often part-time, post-graduate and often external/on-line.

Still speaking for Australia, technical writing can also be part of a certificate, diploma, degree or postgraduate degree in writing. For example, there was a module on technical writing in the Master of Arts (Professional Writing) that I completed.

If you don’t have a qualification in technical writing then other qualifications that people look for in when they employ a technical writer are:

• A computer science degree. Most technical writers work in IT. Unless you are part of a large writing team the people who interview will often be IT people, and helps to be part of IT
• A degree relevant to the field you are in. For example, if you work in the financial services sector then your employer will look more favourably on a degree which involves taxation or superannuation, or engineering if you are working in an engineering plant
• Any degree plus experience in the appropriate field.

Until recently, arts degrees were probably least likely to get you a job in technical writing, although I have found that over the last few years agencies are now also looking at general writing degrees.

I would also say that the degree is useful mostly for getting the first few jobs. After that, it depends on your experience. Experience is, and always has been, a larger factor than qualifications for any technical writing job.

What do you get out of a technical writing degree?

What do you get out of any degree? Some basic experience and that all-important piece of paper.

There’s a lot to be said for the apprentice system, where learning goes hand in hand with experience, because in any course you really only use and understand what you learned when you start working. Even so, I would expect you to come out of a technical writing degree with the following:

• Good writing, grammar, spelling and editing skills
• Understand the project life cycle
• Time and project management skills
• Be able to research
• Understand usability and design
• Understand writing to an audience
• Have some experience with user feedback
• Know how to use basic tools like Word, or XML schemas (and for Word knowing more than just how to use it, but understanding styles and outlines and things like that)
• Know what a style guide is, what it is used for and actually have used one
• Understand the common types of technical writing (user assistance, on-line courses, user manuals, etc)
• Know common terminology and trends in technical communication
• A folio that you can present to prospective employers

What subjects should you cover in a technical writing degree?

I would expect that the subjects should cover most, and preferably all, of the above in some form.