Have you ever made pasta from a recipe? If you have, you’ve probably encountered a great example of poor technical writing.

Many recipes will tell you to cook your pasta in salted water. But very few of those recipes tell you how much salt should be in that water. And that’s crucial information because if your water isn’t salty enough, your pasta won’t have that authentic flavour. The oft-quoted ‘as salty as the sea!’ explanation isn’t helpful either unless you happen to have some sea water handy for comparison.

How much salt should we use?

Good technical writing would give the harassed cook the fastest answer – a teaspoon and a half per litre – and provide more detailed information for cooking geeks like me who have more than one kind of salt in their kitchen cupboards.

We only tend to notice technical writing when it’s done badly, or when it doesn’t give us what we want. Good technical writing is largely invisible. But in business, it’s invaluable.

Whatever industry you’re in or project you’re working on, technical writing is about making somebody’s life easier. That somebody may be trying to learn a new application, or follow a complex procedure. They might be selling a product, or trying to assemble one they’ve bought. Whatever it is, our job is to give them the information they need, when they need it, in the way that’s most useful to them. And when we do, we make the world a better place.

Happy writing.