5 Tips for Improving Your Technical Communication Skills

Neal Perlin, who is a well-known technical communicator and MadCap Flare trainer, has published an article, 5 Tips for Improving Your Technical Communicaiton Skills. The advice is solid, especially the second and third tips:

• Learn to use our authoring tools more effectively
• Learn the technology behind our authoring tools

I think that many people underestimate the "technical" side of technical communication. One of my managers at the TSX did; in a performance evaluation meeting, he said "I didn't realize how technical your job is". This was especially true in my case, as being a lone writer there, I was my own IT department, among other things. I would never expect the help desk to be able to solve my FrameMaker problems. 

The article is worth reading and thinking about.