Technical Writing vs. Business Writing

Below are some types of technical writing that are not developer specific, but may interest you if you are also curious about or currently working on content creation. Although there are many more types that fall into the realm of technical writing, we will only go into depth on those mentioned below.

Courses, blogs, and articles

Creating content in the form of courses, blogs, and articles is a great way for technical people and technical writers to share knowledge with the larger software development community. Content that helps other developers to understand how to use a language, master a framework, or debug a difficult error is often published in these three mediums.

Courses, blogs, and articles should be audience-oriented, logical, clear, accessible, comprehensive, impersonal, and accurate.

Take a look at the example Educative Answer attached below. Take notice of where the technical writing characteristics have been implemented and where they could use a bit of work.

Technical marketing content

An example of technical content marketing would be an article written about a specific product as a way to get word about the product out. Another common example is the content as marketing idea, where websites put out content to attract users to their main site.

Technical marketing content should be audience-oriented, impersonal, logical, and clear. Take a look at the example marketing content below. Notice how it gets straight to the point using a crisp title and an impactful opening sentence.

Technical writing vs. business writing

Technical writing is not the same as business writing, but you will find that technical writing characteristics come in handy with business writing too. The table below compares the two.

Note: Technical writing skills, such as writing for your audience, ensuring comprehensiveness, and being concise, will come in handy with business writing.

Email, Slack, and other forms of communication

Communications with clients and stakeholders

During your career, you may find yourself in conversation with a client or stakeholder about what they are expecting from the product. In this situation, it is crucial that you understand what the client wants and ask the right questions to achieve a deeper meaning of the requirements.

Internal communications

You will communicate with coworkers, your boss, stakeholders, and clients through email, Slack, GChat, etc. Since these communications are usually short and have a clear goal, it is important for them to be efficient. The following technical writing characteristics will improve your delivery:

• Audience-oriented: Audience is important in every single type of technical writing, and this is just as true for internal communications. The good news is that your audience will always be the message recipient.

• Logical: To ensure that the purpose of your message is understood immediately, communication should always be structured logically, with the most important information at the beginning. If you bury this information, the recipient is more likely to miss it entirely.

• Accessible: The content of the message should be easily understandable by the recipient(s). So, all necessary background should be included and all terms defined.

• Clear: Language should be clear and precise. If a word isn’t necessary to the understanding of a sentence, remove it.

Note: When writing emails, Slack messages, and so on, do not use too formal of a tone. If you do, your message will sound cold and inhuman. Rather, be personal (I/Me/Us).

Take a look at the example below:

Can you spot what is wrong with this email? Take a look and see what you think. Click the "Answer" button below to see if you caught all the areas that need improvement

Meeting notes

The clearest purpose for technical writing (and writing in general) is the need to keep records of what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Meeting notes are the first step of this record keeping as they make sure that none of the hard work done in a meeting is lost.

There are three important aspects to document when writing meeting notes. These are:

1. Agenda: This should be created before the meeting and will help to guide the meeting. Without an agenda, meetings are more likely to be derailed by tangents or discussions of related problems.

2. Pain points: These should be written immediately after the meeting, while ideas are still fresh. The longer you wait to write these notes, the more likely you are to forget important details.

3. Next steps: This should be written at the same time as you write the pain points. All next steps should be attached to a DRIDirectly Responsible Individual.

The following technical writing characteristics are guaranteed to improve your intended delivery:

• Audience: Your audience for this document will most likely be those who are directly involved in the meeting and any stakeholders. However, if you know that any other parties will be involved, ensure that there is enough context for them to understand as well.

• Clear: The document should be clear and a quick read.

• Logical: The document should make logical sense with connections between each topic point. This connection should come from the agenda created before the meeting.

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