Technical Writing Tips: 5 quick tips to get started on your technical report

Technical writing gives readers a comprehensive report about a specific topic. As a technical writer, you’re providing detailed information on an issue you’ve researched or studied.

But sometimes the technical writing process is daunting.

You may be stuck with too broad a topic or too much information to research and write about in a short period of time.

You could be baffled by how to organize and present your research.

Should you use the written word or perhaps a chart or graph to convey your findings?

To whom are you even writing? Are they experts or laypeople? Well informed or only somewhat informed, or maybe completely uninformed?

Technical reports can also be highly detailed, vary by topic, and present information differently.

Regardless of your situation, below are five quick tips to get you started.

1.     Specify your audience and know it thoroughly

Knowing your audience, and knowing it intimately, is a must.

First, specify to whom you are writing. What do they want, exactly? Are your hypothetical readers laypeople or experts? What is their knowledge base? In other words, what do they need to know to understand the topic you’re writing about?

Second, keep the audience’s expectations in mind. Imagine you’re leading readers through a scavenger hunt in which they must know exactly what they’re looking for and take the correct path to it. You’re holding their hands through the wilderness, and they’ll need to know exactly where they are and what to expect every step of the way.

Third, try to see your report through your readers’ eyes. Put yourself in their shoes, and adopt their expectations, desires, hopes, reservations, questions, and/or concerns.

2.     What are you doing, and why?

Your technical report will have a goal: to provide information, analyze a topic, persuade an audience, or some combination thereof. Clarity is key for technical writing, so choose and perhaps rank the goal(s) of your report.

After you know what you’re doing, ask why you’re doing it. Is it to provide a solution, detail progress on a project, inform X or Y type person about a new method or strategy, lead a customer to take some kind of action, or something else?

Another helpful tool is the thesis statement. Remember middle school English class? You had a thesis, 3-4 paragraphs of supporting points, and a conclusion. Formulating a clear thesis statement and your supporting points will help nail down the basics of your report.

3.     Quintuple check your research

Perfection might be non-achievable, but getting closer to perfection should be a goal for every writer, technical or not.

Make sure you’ve got your details correct, your sources cited, your experts quoted accurately and fairly, and your organization logical.

Additionally, keep your research and resources easily accessible. You might want to save them on your computer hard drive, a cloud system like Dropbox, or in good, old-fashioned file cabinets. And if your research is electronic, make sure to back your files up.

4.     Careful planning is everything

You’ve done the research, now you’re ready to plan your report.

In addition to your thesis statement, you will want to create a detailed outline with your main points and supporting points.

The outline is there to help you; no one-size-fits-all outline for a technical report exists, so adapt the outline to suit your needs.

Your outline should also be well-organized and logical. Topics should flow easily from one to the next. Recall that your reader is on a scavenger hunt, and you’re the guide. A well-organized outline will also help you navigate the writing process more smoothly.

5.     Write your first draft

Remember the Nike slogan: Just do it. Follow your outline and proceed step-by-step.

Most importantly, you shouldn’t worry about proofreading or editing just yet. Writing the first draft is about putting words, images, charts, graphs, etc., on paper or in digital ink.

So what are your favorite quick tips on starting a technical report? What do you find most helpful? Do you have anything to add to this post? Let me know in the comments below, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or by email!