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Technical Writing Best Practices

Located in Atlanta, ProEdit provides technical writing services throughout the U.S. and abroad. ProEdit's technical writing services reflect the industry's best practices. Here are some of the best practices we employ:

• "Chunk" your documentation. ProEdit breaks your documentation into smaller portions using bulleted lists, shorter paragraphs, and cross-references. We chunk your documents according to topics—one topic per chunk. Chunking keeps the readers' attention, providing them space to stop and absorb what they've read.

• Provide adequate white space. Too much text crammed onto a page intimidates readers and turns them away. In technical writing, we always use white space around the text to break up pages. Too much text can tire the eyes.

• Use cross-references to related information. Technical manuals can be quite bulky, especially when information is repeated unnecessarily. ProEdit uses cross-references to link related information that is described elsewhere in the document and is not essential to the current discussion.1 In online documentation, we provide adequate hyperlinks to cross-reference related information.

• Use step/action tables. Step/action tables provide a practical way to separate procedural steps from other descriptive information. This is a very important aspect of information mapping.2 Procedures contained in step/action tables are easy to read and follow, increasing document effectiveness.

Learn more about the technical writing industry's best practices.

Additional Information

• ProEdit's Technical Writing Services
• Learn more about ProEdit's technical writing process.
• About Technical Writing

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Learn more about ProEdit's technical writing services.
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1 GNOME Documentation Style Guide V1.3. Sun Microsystems. 2003. http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/book1.html
2 See an example at http://www.informationmapping.com/im_aboutus/method/
aboutus_baprocedure.htm#After

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