(Part 2) Top products from r/technicalwriting

Books:

Writing Software Documentation. It's an oldie, but a goodie. Great text to help with learning the basic concepts behind tech writing (task orientation, audience analysis, etc).

Business and Administrative Communication. Super expensive, but, imho, one of the most solid all-around books about writing in the business world. It covers everything from memos and effective PowerPoint presentations to RFPs and Feasibility Studies, and it does it extremely well. This was one of my college textbooks that was so useful that I kept it, and when the HR department "borrowed" it and "forgot" to give it back, I bought it again.

I remember The Handbook of Technical Writing being a good base, too. That was the text for my intro to technical writing class. Covers usability studies and other fun things.

A style guide of your choosing. If you want to write for software, though, get the Microsoft Manual of Style. Otherwise, Chicago or AP.

Software:

Download a trial version of RoboHelp and play with their sample projects, and learn how to use it. After you do that, try the same for madcap Flare. FrameMaker is important to some technical writers, but I've never had a job that didn't phase it out way before I started working there. It feels like one of those products that is slowly dying but just won't let go (but, then again, RoboHelp felt that way in 2007, so I am probably wrong about that one!). FrameMaker is primarily used for publishing layouts and such. If you work in hardware you might see it more often. Software generally doesn't ship with printed guides these days, though...

Learn to use MSWord like a pro. Specifically, learn to use styles, the reference tools, automatic TOCs, indexes, review, the developer's tab, and pretty much everything that is on the MS Word certification exam. Secondary to that, make sure you understand Excel and all the other office tools fairly well.

Learn a CMS, like SharePoint.

Personal:

Get used to criticism. Everyone thinks that their writing is better than anyone else's, and everyone has ideas. People will pull your writing in fifty directions every day.

Extinguish passive voice. Forever. Kill it dead.

Use fewer words and send your adjectives on vacation. Simple and sweet.

Be awesome at figuring things out on your own.

Visit a whole bunch of help and documentation for various products and geek out on it. Study the good and bad, the effective and not, the appealing and the ugly. Keep notes about what you like and want to emulate and what you hate and don't find helpful.

Practice:

Take your new skills and use them. Find a good open source project and volunteer some time writing up some documentation. Some potential projects are tiki.org, Mozilla, etc.

Fun:

Read all of the Tina the Tech Writer strips from Dilbert. That will be your new life. :)

A suggestion, because college writing, even for a tech comm degree, seems to be quite different from the kind of writing you'll do professionally: Read a lot of documentation.

You don't need to read it to understand the product or service, you need to read it to understand what different kinds of documentation look like. And to do this, you need to read a lot of documentation. A lot of documentation. You need to spend hours and days and weeks and months reading documentation. This is how you start to understand what good documentation looks like, and more importantly what bad documentation looks like.

Is the documentation easy to navigate? Can you logically follow from one step to the next? Does the formatting and font choice make it easy to read? What about the use of color - too much, not enough, not at all? Are the screenshots easy to understand? Do they use lists where a table would be a better choice, or vice versa?

For some of these, there isn't a "right" answer - it will come down to personal preference and also to things like corporate style guides. But the more documentation you read, the better you'll be able to create documentation that will be helpful to your audience.

• Find the documentation for every app or service you use. Read it.
  
• Your school uses some kind of LMS (learning management system). Find the documentation for it. Read it.
  
• Do you use a mobile app that has mobile only documentation? Find it, read it.
  
• Look for the documentation for your TV or streaming device or speakers. Read it.
  
• Look at the owner's guide for your car (if you have one). Read it - it's probably available online.
  
• Find the documentation for something you'd never use. Read it and see if you can understand it.
  
  Some places to start, just off the top of my head:
  
  
• Django documentation (Django is a Python framework)
  
• Fedora documentation (Fedora is the community project for Red Hat)
  
• FreeBSD documentation (FreeBSD is one of the oldest open source projects)
  
• mandoc (language for creating UNIX man pages - very technical)
  
• Hugo documentation (a static site generator)
  
  I also highly recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book. Documentation design is very important, and this is the best reference I know of. I use the principles in the book to plan the layout for anything I write.
  
  ​

Here is my list of books:

1.Technical Writing Process by Kieran Morgan. This book is about a five-step approach to creation of almost any piece of technical documentation such as a user guide, manual or procedure. It’s suitable for a wide range of audiences: aspiring technical writers and students of technical writing, non-writers who find themselves assigned with the task of creating technical documentation, established writers who want to bring more structure to their work, and anyone managing a documentation project.

2.Technical Writer Career Guide by ClickHelp.

Whether you only consider becoming a technical writer and not sure where to start, or already have a job and looking for ideas and inspiration to develop further in this direction, you might want to scan through it.

This ebook covers a wide range of questions, from the history of technical writing taking its roots in antiquity (yes, it’s that old!) to technical writing skills, modern tools, workflows and documentation design.

3. The Insider’s Guide to Technical Writing by Krista Van Laan

Whether you’re thinking of becoming a technical writer, just starting out, or you’ve been working for a while and feel the need to take your skills to the next level, The Insider’s Guide to Technical Writing can help you build a successful career in technical communication.

4.Managing Your Documentation Projects by JoAnn T. Hackos

The book devoted exclusively to technical publication project management, managing your documentation projects, arms you with proven strategies and techniques for producing high-quality, extremely usable documentation, while cutting cost and time-to-market.

5. Technical Communication, 9th edition by Mike Markel.

Known for his student-friendly voice and eye for technology trends, Mike Markel addresses the realities of the digital workplace through fresh samples and cases, practical writing advice, and a companion Web site — TechComm Web — that continues to set the standard with content developed and maintained by the author.

6.Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style Online is the venerable, time-tested guide to style, usage, and grammar in an accessible online format. It is the indispensable reference for writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers, informing the editorial canon with sound, definitive advice.

7.Technical Writing for Dummies by Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts.

It shows you step–by–step how to research and organize information for your documents, plan your project in a technical brief, work collaboratively with your reviewers etc.

Courses:

1.Oregon State University

This technical writing course will give you an overview of the genre and prepare you to produce instructive, informational, and persuasive documents based on well-defined and achievable outcomes.

2.Communicaid

Communicaid’s Technical Writing course will provide you with practical frameworks and skills necessary to translate highly complex subjects into reader friendly accessible documents. Attending a Technical Writing course will give you the knowledge and skills to produce technical documents that get read — and understood.

3. Coursera

Every course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from the world’s best universities and educational institutions. Courses include recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums. When you complete a course, you’ll receive a shareable electronic Course Certificate.

4.Society for Technical Communication

The Society for Technical Communication is the world’s largest and oldest professional association dedicated to the advancement of the field of technical communication. The Society’s members span the field of the technical communication profession from students and academics to practitioners and managers.

5. Udemy

This course is aimed at the beginners. In this course, you will learn the principles of technical writing, how to create a document template, and how to write your first User Guide.

The students are required to have Windows PC machines and Office 2007 or 2010 (Word and Excel). Everything else is included in the course. The students do not need to buy any other books, videos, etc. to follow the course.

6.Emphasis

This comprehensive course will help your team communicate their messages clearly, concisely and effectively. “We’ll train them to put their conclusions up front, not buried in supporting detail. And we’ll show them how to make their recommendations clear for their intended audience. Above all, we’ll build their confidence and pride in their writing”.

7. TechWriter-Certification

Dr. John Reid and Dr. Kenneth Rainey originally developed online technical writing courses that were taught at their respective institutions in Georgia. They were borne out of credit side programs offered at Southern Polytechnic State University and non-credit courses through Kennesaw State University. From these efforts, Dr. Reid and Dr. Rainey developed additional courses of study, with the same rigor but targeted to the workforce. These formed the backbone of the now, well-established technical writing programs that have followed.

I use this to teach technical and professional writing to ME undergrads.

Writing in Engineering: A Brief Guide (Short Guides to Writing in the Disciplin) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199343551/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Xci-AbSM0WRE9

It’s short, to the point, and fairly affordable compared to textbooks.