Everyone appreciates an easy to understand and clear technical document. Many engineers hate to write technical documents, only a few reluctantly piece together some form of documentation which in most cases aren’t much of help to anyone. Just like with anything non-trivial, technical writing takes a little effort and a sustained enthusiasm to bear fruit.

The old school editorial style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style or the University of Oxford Style Guide provide a general use case. However, engineering teams should use an editorial style guide specialized in technical writing. Here are two such style guides from the worlds big tech giants whose products touch almost every tech related person.

• The Google developer documentation style guide
• The Microsoft Writing Style Guide

Google also has a collection of Technical Writing Courses and resources that aims to improve your technical documentation.

Generally speaking, good writing possesses certain broad, recognizable characteristics. They have come to be known as the 3 C’s,

• clarity
• coherence
• conciseness