Advent of Technical Writing: Style

This is the ninth post in the Advent of Technical Writing series, wherein I will share something I have learned from my experience as a technical writer. My experience is primarily in software technical writing, but what you read may apply to different fields, too. View all posts in the series.

Taylor Swift’s song Style, part of her 1989 album, echoes in my head as I start writing this post.

That is style (on more levels than one!).

Technical writing involves a lot of regiment. Many organisations have style guides that document how you should write. Content should be consistent. But, there is still significant room for creativity. We often call this “style.” Style is how you write. The way that you express, explain, structure. The way that you turn an idea from a light bulb above your head (metaphorically), to a finished piece.

Growing into style

Throughout my professional technical writing, there have been varying degrees to which I can apply a style. When I wrote content for beginners who were learning Python, I liked to use coffee shops as examples. To explain data structures, what standard library functions did, and more. I did this because I liked coffee. This was part of my style. I also learned the importance of balance between direct language that fosters understanding and bluntness. I welcome introducing a bit of playfulness into my writing.

In my current role, which involves documenting open source software, writing technical guides, marketing materials, and more, my style comes out in different ways. The way I often end introductions with text like “Without further ado, let’s get started!” or in the way that I include a visual example of what a reader will accomplish by the end of a guide before the end of an introduction.

Don’t worry about finding your own style; you will grow into one as you explore. I have found writing different types of content helpful in building my style. Writing personal content on this blog has been helpful, too. The more types of writing to which you are exposed — both through reading and writing — the more you will get to know how you prefer to communicate.

In writing, these is a place for directness, conciseness, whimsy, visual examples, introducing additional context that you found fascinating while researching a topic, and more. You get to decide how you communicate concepts.

How do you find style? Read, write, get feedback, and keep going. Don’t worry about finding a style. You will grow into one over time. You will find yourself using certain words and phrases over again. You will find that you structure your work in certain ways. The feedback you receive will help inform how you write.

The goal of style is not to be distinct so much as it is to use your unique abilty to express concepts in ways that people can understand best.

Style outside of professional writing

Indeed, whimsy and humour, while not appropriate for many professional tasks, can go a long way in personal writing. For example, I just came across a blog post on convolutions, a mathematical concept with applications in machine learning, that started like this:

Like making engineering students squirm? Have them explain convolution and (if you’re barbarous) the convolution theorem. They’ll mutter something about sliding windows as they try to escape through one.

Here, the author has taken a more informal tone than most writing I have read on machine learning. The author decided that these words would be effective as a hook to introduce their piece. The author then goes on to say:

Yikes. Let’s start without calculus: Convolution is fancy multiplication.

While “fancy” might not fit in an academic paper, it fits in well in this explainer. When you introduce complex technical topics to a new audience in educational material, informal language can go a long way to make your content more relatable and less dry. The extent to which you use this opportunity? That is style.