: Re: Does a technical writer need a technical background? Does a technical writer need a technical background?

@Alves689

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Yes, an effective technical writer will have enough technical background knowledge and experience to create useful content from the (often sparse) source material.

However, more important traits of effective technical writers are strong writing/communication skills and a deep curiosity about the subject matter and the audience. These will take a not-very-technical writer a long way in the job.

The "technical writer" title covers a broad range of job descriptions. As a result, in the field, working technical writers have a broad range of technical skills and knowledge requirements. The less technical the subject, the less stringently technical acumen applies.

Writers working with end-user documentation and help often have less need for deep knowledge of programming, for instance, though knowledge of the field in which the product is to be used is often expected. A background in user experience design (cognitive psych) is often a plus. And there are typically requirements around the production tools used by the team (Office, HTML, XML, etc.).

So the definition of "technical" may vary with the subject, audience and team.

On the other hand, more deeply technical content requires deep understanding of the subject matter. I don't think a writer with no programming experience could write useful API docs, and the usefulness of the docs probably increases with the experience and knowledge of the writer.

I have worked with technical writers who did not have particularly technical backgrounds. For the most part they could fake it by following forms and styles and reusing bits and pieces from other sources. This is, really, just glorified editing.

To be fair, however, I have also worked with writers with deeply technical backgrounds who also could not writer useful docs because they were not effective communicators. They understood the subject matter extremely well, but were unable to clearly and succinctly convey how it worked or what to do with it.

So technical knowledge is a requirement, but not the only one.

There are two scenarios where one could argue

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