Technical and specialist writing is a form of art. It demands a careful balance between complexity and clarity — a skillset critical for industries like technology, finance, engineering, and healthcare, where accuracy and precision are the most important values of communication.
Yet, great technical writing also involves making complex information accessible, engaging, and actionable.
Here's a quick look at the tips you will find in this blog post:
- Effective technical writing requires understanding the audience's background and tailoring content accordingly.
- Clear, well-structured and scannable content is crucial.
- Balancing professionalism with approachability and focusing on problem-solving helps engage readers and make technical content more relatable and effective.
- Excess emotionality, marketing cliches and discriminatory language are off-limits in technical writing.
What Is Technical Writing And Who Needs It?
Technical and specialist writing focuses on conveying complex information clearly and accurately to a specific audience.
This type of writing emphasizes clarity, structure, and factual accuracy, aiming to inform or instruct the reader without relying too much on emotional appeal.
Many industries rely on technical and specialist writing to communicate detailed and complex information clearly to their audiences.
Automotive brands like Tesla and General Motors use it for service manuals, user guides, and technical specifications.
Aerospace companies such as Boeing or Airbus require it for aircraft maintenance documentation, safety procedures, and regulatory compliance.
Biotech and research firms like need this writing style for scientific reports, patent applications, and product instructions.
Telecommunications companies use it for network infrastructure documentation and technical troubleshooting guides.
However, technical and specialist writing is often used in marketing when the target audience is highly knowledgeable or when the product itself is complex.
B2B tech companies like Cisco or Siemens use technical writing in whitepapers, case studies, and solution briefs to explain how their products solve specific industry challenges.
In hardware or software sales, technical datasheets are common, offering detailed specifications that engineers and decision-makers use to assess suitability.
Medical device companies also use it for marketing by providing highly detailed product descriptions, ensuring compliance and informing purchasing decisions in healthcare.
In these cases, technical marketing blends the factual, detailed nature of specialist writing with the goal of persuading potential clients that the product or solution meets their complex needs, offering a bridge between pure marketing and technical documentation.
How can you satisfy the needs of a specialist audience, while still remaining readable and persuasive?
Understand The Audience And Speak Their Language
Technical writing starts with a deep understanding of the audience. The way you communicate with a seasoned software engineer differs from how you'd address a financial manager or business executive.
Understanding the reader’s background, needs, and familiarity with the subject matter ensures the content will be relevant and comprehensible.
A whitepaper for a software development team can afford to be jargon-heavy, while an executive briefing may need simplified explanations of the same technology.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Blog offers a great example of how to cater to a specific, knowledgeable audience.
The language used is professional and highly technical, assuming a deep understanding of cloud services.
Terms like “orchestration,” “multi-cloud architecture,” and “containerization” are used without needing extra explanation because the target audience is well-versed in these topics.
Argyle, a platform developer for payroll connectivity, on the other hand, takes a more accessible approach to writing about technology.
The content addresses business professionals by focusing on the practical outcomes of their services.
Make The Complex Simple Where Possible
The number one rule of technical writing is clarity. Even when dealing with highly complex subjects, the goal should always be to distill the information into understandable chunks.
This doesn’t mean dumbing it down, but instead structuring content to make it easier to follow.
One great example is AWS (Amazon Web Services). AWS regularly publishes blogs, whitepapers, and documentation aimed at developers and engineers.
Despite the technical complexity of the services they offer, AWS manages to explain their technologies, like machine learning models or serverless computing, in a step-by-step manner.
They break the content into digestible sections, frequently employing real-world examples and diagrams to illustrate their points.
Similarly, Microsoft Azure Documentation makes extensive use of visual aids, interactive examples, and comprehensive indexing to assist in navigation.
Even when tackling advanced topics like Kubernetes clusters or quantum computing, the content remains logically structured, helping users absorb the material without getting overwhelmed.
Add these Writitude rules to your custom tone of voice guide to improve your technical writing:
Control Long and Complex Words
Use simpler words when possible, keeping complex terms only when they’re necessary for precision. Overcomplicating language can alienate readers or confuse those less familiar with the subject.
Control Rare and Unusual Words
When appropriate, focus on familiar terms, ensuring accessibility across a wide audience, especially if the content is intended for global consumption.
Structure For Readability
People don’t always read word-for-word, specially experts who know what they are looking for. Many skim through content to find relevant information, making a well-structured layout crucial.
Effective technical writing uses formatting, subheadings, bullet points, numbered lists, and concise paragraphs to guide the reader.
For example, Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure Blog excels in structuring content.
Long-form posts are broken into well-defined sections, each with clear subheadings and summaries.
Bullet points and step-by-step instructions help simplify dense technical content, making it easier for the reader to extract key takeaways.
Similarly, Google Cloud's documentation is designed for easy navigation. Google uses an interactive table of contents, jump links, and collapsible sections to allow developers to quickly pinpoint the information they need without scrolling endlessly through unrelated details.
Use headers, subheaders, and bullet points to improve readability. Keep paragraphs short and to the point, with one idea per paragraph.
Tools like tables of contents, indexes, or in-page navigation links enhance usability.
Focus On Use Cases And Problem Solving
One of the most powerful ways to keep readers engaged is by focusing on how your product or solution solves real-world problems.
Instead of simply describing features, explain how those features translate into benefits for the user.
The best technical writing walks the reader through a process, showing them how to apply the knowledge.
AWS's case studies are a prime example of solution-oriented technical writing.
Rather than just explaining how cloud computing works, they walk through real-world scenarios of how companies use AWS solutions to improve their infrastructure, save costs, or scale operations.
Argyle’s platform also focuses heavily on addressing modern business needs, like payroll data integration and verification.
Their site is filled with examples of how their solutions are helping companies streamline financial services processes, illustrated through client testimonials and case studies.
Use Evidence And Visuals
Data plays a critical role in technical writing, especially when you are making recommendations or claims.
Well-researched, data-driven writing bolsters credibility and can persuade a skeptical reader (and yes, specialists tend to be critical).
Visuals such as charts, graphs, and diagrams also enhance understanding by offering a visual breakdown of complex concepts.
Oracle and Microsoft both frequently use detailed performance benchmarks and case studies, incorporating hard numbers that demonstrate the efficiency and reliability of their technologies.
For example, performance comparisons between different cloud solutions often use charts and tables to visually communicate the advantages of one approach over another.
HubSpot demonstrates the power of data in technical writing by frequently publishing detailed reports backed by industry statistics, survey results, and market trends.
Their whitepapers and blog posts always cite sources, ensuring readers that the information is reliable.
Maintain A Conversational Yet Professional Tone
Technical content often suffers from being too dry or dense, but that doesn't have to be the case.
While technical writing should maintain professionalism, it can also be engaging and approachable.
Striking the right tone depends on the subject matter and audience.
Slack's blog is a stellar example of how to infuse a conversational tone into technical writing.
While discussing APIs and integrations, they maintain a light and engaging voice that makes complex concepts feel more approachable.
Slack uses humor sparingly, but effectively, to keep readers interested without sacrificing clarity or professionalism.
Even documentation — arguably the most boring chunk of texts in a company — can be made readable with the adjustment of tone of voice.
Atlassian's documentation for their product suite, like Jira and Confluence, balances technical detail with a friendly, human tone.
Their content explains complex software setups, but with an informal touch that feels approachable even to users who may not be deeply familiar with the product.
Add these Writitude rules to your custom tone of voice guide to improve your technical writing:
Forbid noun strings
Long noun phrases (e.g., “cloud infrastructure optimization strategy”) can overwhelm the reader and are often unnecessary. Break them up into clearer, more digestible chunks.
Forbid the Passive Voice
Active voice makes writing clearer and more direct. Passive constructions can make sentences unnecessarily long and ambiguous.
Forbid word repetition
Repeating words or phrases weakens writing. Use synonyms or restructure sentences to maintain reader interest and avoid redundancy.
Limit the Use of “There Is”
Starting sentences with “There is” or “There are” is often unnecessary and weakens the impact of the sentence. Aim for more direct sentence constructions.
Adding tone of voice rules in Writitude
Minimize Prepositions and Pronouns
Too many prepositions can convolute a sentence, while overusing pronouns can cause ambiguity. Keep sentences concise and clear by trimming unnecessary words.
Control The Emotionality
Excess emotionality is an enemy of facts, which makes it unwelcome in technical writing.
Emotionality can introduce ambiguity and misinterpretation and it can create a perception that the writer is biased, turning of critical expert readers who value facts and objectivity.
Add these Writitude rules to your custom tone of voice guide to improve your technical writing:
Forbid words regarded as marketing cliches
Words like “revolutionary,” “cutting-edge,” or “next-gen” can feel insincere or overhyped in technical contexts.
Stick to factual, evidence-based descriptions of your product or service to maintain trust. If your product of service is, indeed, revolutionary, prove it by data!
Control the Use of Exclamation Marks
Exclamation marks suggest strong emotion, which is generally out of place in technical writing. Reserve their use for truly exceptional instances, if at all.
Limit the use of ellipses
Ellipses can cause confusion, making the text seem incomplete or uncertain.
Limit the use of emojis
Emojis are generally inappropriate in professional technical writing as they detract from the formal tone.
Stay Clear Of Discrimination And Bias
Experts and specialists are as diverse as our society is in general. Surely, you don’t want to alienate them by using words that can be perceived as diminishing or discriminatory by some groups.
Add these Writitude rules to your custom tone of voice guide to improve your technical writing:
Forbid words that come across as ableist Forbid words that come across as ageist Forbid words that come across as racist
Terms that are derogatory or dismissive toward certain groups — whether based on ability, age, or race — should never be used in technical and specialist writing.
We Have Automated It For You
At Writitude, we’ve made sure to cover all the essentials for specialist writing. If your audience consists of experts, choose an automated tone of voice guide called “Specialist talk.”
Signing up for a Writitude account is all it takes to start using it, and even our free “Basic” plan gives you access to our pre-set tones.
Inside our “Specialist talk” tone there are 20 rules, starting from the ban on discriminatory language and setting the limit on emotionality, to techniques for improving readability of complex texts.
But that’s not all — you can personalize your specialist tone of voice by adding your own brand glossaries or specific tone and style rules to make it uniquely yours.
Use them to ban specific words that your audience doesn’t like, or require keywords that need to be included in your copy.
Want to share your tone guide with copywriters or other team members? You’ll just need to upgrade to Premium.
This upgrade also unlocks the ability to create drafts using AI in your custom tone. With this approach, you can ensure your brand’s messaging stays consistent with its unique voice and values.
