Modern Technical Writing Quotes

“Like all writers, technical writers aim to produce content that their intended audiences will read and find useful.1 This has to be the goal, because any other goal is absurd.”
― Andrew Etter, Modern Technical Writing: An Introduction to Software Documentation

“Consider the following statements from two hypothetical technical writers: "In my professional opinion, the content is clear, concise, correct, and complete. The language is professional, conforms to our style guide, and projects a strong brand. Some of the tables were too wide for print, so we now enforce a two-column limit on all tables. Overall, I'm happy with the quality of the documentation." "The application logs show that the product only has 1,300 users, yet the documentation received 2,400 page views last month. In that same timespan, readers reported six inaccuracies, all of which I resolved within 72 hours. The five most popular search terms return the pages I would expect, and the design team recently helped me optimize the header margins for readability. Overall, I'm happy with the quality of the documentation." I sincerely hope that you find the second argument more compelling. In any field, opinions become more credible when you attach quantitative metrics to them. Documentation is no different.”
― Andrew Etter, Modern Technical Writing: An Introduction to Software Documentation

“Great documentation makes new hires productive in days instead of weeks, prevents thousands of calls to customer support, is the difference between crippling downtime and rock solid stability, and inspires true, fervent love of development platforms.”
― Andrew Etter, Modern Technical Writing: An Introduction to Software Documentation