🚀 go-pugleaf

As a technical writer I have a few of my own rules of thumb.  In no
special order...

1.  Use "for example" a lot.

2.  Use the product.  Writing from engineers' explanations is fiction.
Writing from project requirements is fantasy.

3. When you inherit a new project, "grep" for "that" and "which" and correct
them.

4. Read Strunk and White once a year.

5. Keep returning to your sources until you understand. If you don't understand
something, there is vanishing little chance you can explain it.   

6.  Cut the crap.  Does the reader NEED this word?  No?  Cut it.  Does the
reader NEED this sentence?  No?  Cut it.  This chapter?  This manual?
Cut, slash, chop.  Information buried is information lost.

7.  Think of your reader continually, and talk to him or her through what you
write. 

8.  Use personal pronouns, active voice, and try to rewrite "being" verbs out
of your sentences.

9. End sentences with prepositions, split infinitives, and so on, as needed
in order to sound natural.  This requires you to know grammar well enough so
that when an engineer changes "use" to "utilize", or whatever, you can
politely (and with good humor) explain that he is full of ....

10.  Remember that you are really an ANTI-technical writer.

11. NEVER rewrite.  No, wait, where'd that come from?  Heinlein who?