Technical writing community
Technical writing community
Technical writing helps turn technical concepts into clear, concise and useful information. We write technical documentation and guidance to help technologists use products and services.
The technical writing community exists to:
- help government understand how user-centred technical content can contribute to building and delivering better public services
- define standards and best practice guidelines for technical content
- build capability and skills within the profession
Who the community is for
You do not need to be a technical writer to join. You might be interested in this community if you work in the public sector and you:
- are a technical writer
- are a content designer
- write for technologists
- work with technical writers
- want to know more about technical writing
Training, events, and recruitment
Currently, we’re not able to offer these due to capacity limitations.
Keep in touch
You can get in touch with us for informal, ad-hoc advice for technical writing challenges. Contact the technical writing community on:
- the #technical-writing channel on the cross-government Slack - you can create an account using your government email address
- technical-writers@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
Resources
Articles, courses, training and communities for people who do technical writing, or are interested in learning about technical writing.
What technical writers do and how we work
- What it’s like being a tech writer at the Government Digital Service (GDS)
- The Product is Docs
- Why the dev should not write the docs (and how they can help anyway)
- How we use pair writing - GDS blog
- Email the technical writing team at technical-writers@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk about attending a group content review (‘crit’), show and tell or weekly meeting
How we write
GOV.UK style and content principles
- Content design: planning, writing and managing content
- Introduction to content design course
- Clarity is king - GDS blog
- GOV. UK style guide
Writing for technologists
- Documenting APIs and Writing API reference documentation
- Google’s technical writing courses
- Documenting APIs: a guide for technical writers and engineers
- Building navigation for your doc site: 5 best practices
Writing accessible content
- Examples of improving link accessibility and improving image accessibility from GOV.UK Pay tech docs
Tools and techniques we use
Docs as code
- Why we use a ‘docs as code’ approach for technical documentation - Technology blog
- Docs like Code
- Docs as code tools
Git and GitHub for writers
- GitHub Learning Lab
- Git and GitHub for poets
- Introduction to version control and Git
- Learn Git branching
Measuring content performance
Writing types of content
GitHub
Error messages
Blogs
- How to write a good blog post - GDS Digital Engagement blog
- How to make blog posts accessible - GDS Digital Engagement blog
Learning about APIs and API design
- freeCodeCamp has a course on APIs
- API Handyman
Learning about technical topics
- Sign up for GDS’s Learn to Code sessions on Ruby
- Beginner JavaScript notes and reference
- Continuous Deployment (CD) for documentation sites
Communities
- #technical-writing on cross-government Slack
- Write the Docs Slack
- Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC)
- The UX Crunch
- tcworld conference
- Technical Communication UK (TCUK) conference
Newsletters and mailing lists
Podcasts
Blogs
- Last update:
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Amendments to the support currently available from Technical Writing community.
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Added several new resources for the technical writing community.
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Guidance first published