The Bullets Point

Technical documents which are jargan free, written in simple English, comprehensible even by low level English reader, has evolved many ways to disseminate information more directly than deciphering them from long winded sentences. One such evolution has been the use of bullet points in the documents. While the use of bullet points has immensely benefited the learner, it has also created a confused state, misconception, and problem for the technical writers as to how, where, and when to use the bullet points in the document.

The use of bullet points in the documents has been so spurious that writers have more likely decided to use them for any kind of information. Whether the information can be used in fragmented format as bullet points or not; that has not been a part of wise decisions. Writers sometimes forget that some information which can be better described in a proper sentence can not be used as bullet point. All that they want is to see more bullet points. Their understanding of using more bullet points is somehow an assumption to consider ‘more the bullet points, better the document’. In turn, more the bullet points; information is better understood.

The paradox is when a writer can not make a judgment whether to communicate information in bullet format or not, goes ahead and tries to make any or all information in bulleted formats. This is doing more harm than good. The obvious question comes in mind; what is the concept and principle behind creating bullet points in a document.

I got introduced with the concept of using bullet points in the documents when I became a part of the technical writing community and started authoring technical documents. Even though I was introduced to bullet points, I was not very comfortable using them in the documents but moreover made it a practice referring its usage as prescribed in the style guides.

My main referring style guide remain the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (MSTP) at large but used some other Style Guides too, that were specific to the employer’s documentation requirement. These style guides only provide you the directions as to what items and how they should be used in the bullet. To be more precise, the steps to complete a task or procedure are used in the bulleted points either in itemized or numbered format. In short, bullet points define lists; however, not all lists should be defined by bullets. This can be tricky when you are not exposed to the concept and logic behind the usage.

After a few years of work as a technical author, I got the opportunity to be a reviewer and editor. My job as reviewer and editor was not only to correct the documents but provide even tips for the writers to improve the documents. It is the job of not only mending the documents but minding and mentoring the writers who work along with you or whose job you are reviewing. You need to provide answers for all what, when, where, why and how of the corrections made to the documents.

Even after my long odyssey with the technical publication, I realized – The Bullet Points are the bullets point for me and I hardly know them well. Then my journey began to explore, discover, invent and re-invent the bullet points. While I explored and gained some of the knowledge for better use of the bullet points I thought to share which can be useful. You can visit my next post on this.

Technical Writers Training

The profession of technical writing is no more an isolated domain of west. The past decades have ushered the emerging numbers of technical writers in India too. To those who have not come across this profession or this opportunity, technical writing is the art and science of writing about the technical subjects to help end users of the technology.

Most often the requirement of becoming a technical writers demands advanced knowledge of English writing. In fact the good knowledge of English writing holds good to comprehend complex technical knowledge into simple English writing that helps user to understand the technology. But don’t get misguided that to be a technical writer you need to have prior experience of journalism or mass communication or a post graduate degree in English. If you have flare for writing in English and if you can write simple and crisp English, you are in the league. However, if you are transitioning from Journalism or have a post graduate degree in English, you will have an edge. Yet again, I would say that writing is more of an art than science and it can be anyone’s passion.

Today, the opportunity in the market requires you to be good in English. Many companies would prefer you to be on-board and train you in the technical writing on job. Most others would like to have a person who has some exposure of technical writing and knowledge of styles and tools of the trade.

The technical writing training offered by different institutes in different parts of the country exposes you on the knowledge of the following:

• Different style guides of technical writing
• User guide authoring and publishing tools
• Help authoring and editing tools
• Image editing and designing tools
• Classroom sessions on procedure and instruction writing
• A glimpse of different kinds of documents written by a technical writer
• The different technological domain in which technical writers are getting employed
• Creating a sample documents  

The training institutes are meant to teach technical writing and not English writing. You will be disappointed if you think that they can teach you technical writing without you knowing English writing. However, you can complement your average level of writing skills with the expert level of authoring tool knowledge which often required in trouble shooting and that makes you a production specialist.

If you have good skills of writing and preliminary knowledge of authoring tool, getting a job as a technical writer will not be tough. Today, almost all the industry driven by technology requires technical writers into their fold. Being a trained technical writer would greatly enhance your chances of getting a job.

1,160,000,000 hits for “why style guides?”

I casually gave a search in the smartest search engine ‘Google’ to take a dig about the need of style guides. It produced 1,160,000,000 results. The total number of search generated, definitely guarantees the importance of style guides but at the same time these numbers do not justified the relevance of the content what I was looking for. Nevertheless, even if I narrow down my search, I am sure I am going to get quite large number of sites which will have message for me about the style guides.

Why style guides? Do we really need it? The answer from most of the technical writers is going to be ‘yes’ in all cases. This is the approach of any technical writer to produce documentation conforming to the elements of writing to be consistent across all the documents of same nature. For publications or companies with a large number of contributing writers, a style guide is essential if the end product has to look alike.

Style guide becomes important for technical writing, commercial or business writing, journalism, web copy writing and many other forms of publications. In all these cases, to ensure the consistent writing style, guidelines are usually published. This allow writers to contribute avoiding their personal element of style but to adhere to the style of publication, company or website.

A style guide provides a means of documenting basic rules or features of the writing. For technical writers a style guide for a particular customer or project is to ensure that the data they deliver is in acceptable form and in consistent to the previous deliveries or other publications that the customer already has.

The style guides differs depending upon company, publication, customer because of the fact that there is no single authoritative source on styles for written English. The use of punctuation and correct grammar is well established and clear but style is much more than just the correct usage of punctuation, grammar and vocabulary.

Style can define many different aspects such as document structure, paragraph numbering and indentation, the use of headings, the use of lists, trademark or branding considerations, sentence lengths, layout, font sizes, depth of treatment of a subject, spelling (UK v US for example), readership considerations, use of abbreviations, terminology, the use of symbols, and voice preferences (active v passive).The list could go longer too. The fact is creative writers may not be worried about these listed items, whereas a technical writer will have to heed to all of these defined styles.

For a writer who is associated with a company or publication will follow the guided principles laid down by the employer but the real challenge is for Freelance writers. Freelance writers should continually evolve style guides for each customer or publication type.

Most of the creative writers love using their own styles. Nothing is wrong about that but if they only follow certain amount of styling consistently the job of proofreading and reviewing becomes easier. That is why sometimes the publisher prescribes certain guidelines to send your write-ups in the particular format and use defined styles. Failing which even if your write-up is brilliant, it will not see the light of the day.

Some of the writers would still disagree to follow the style guides. For them, ‘long live imagination, bury the style guides’ may be the catch line. You too can fall into this category if you are not tied up as a contract technical writer being on the payroll of a company. Technical writing is structured writing and it demands certain style guides to be followed.