Shanghai Tech Writer

In a parallel universe, what would the documentation I’m currently working on look like if it was written by another technical writer? That was a strange thought I had today.

I started working on a 1.0 documentation project several weeks ago. I’m the only technical writer on the development team so I’m fully responsible for creating and writing 100% of the content. The project is near end-of-development and we’re about to go into Beta soon, hopefully during NI Week. While there have been quite a few hiccups in the past few weeks with massive design and UI changes, I’m nearly done writing most of the content.

Company Style Guide

As I was writing and reviewing the last few topics today, I couldn’t help but wonder what my documentation would like if it was written by someone else. I’ve been a technical writer at NI for nine months now and I’m still learning a lot about company style guide and the art of technical writing.

In a previous post, I mentioned that we write in a different language here at NI, called NI style guide. We have a very specific way of writing documentation at NI and every technical writer is required to follow that style. Being a new technical writer, I’m sure to have many style issues in my documentation but no worries. We have a system in place to ensure that every documentation adheres and meets company standard.

Reviews, Reviews, and More Reviews

In the coming few weeks, my project will go through several rounds of review. From content expert review to first review to final review to R&D signoff to lead signoff, reviewed by several technical writers, SMEs, CEs, PSEs, managers, legal, and marketing.

Every piece of documentation goes through a series of scrutiny to ensure that every user guide, every tutorial, every topic, every graphic, every link, every sentence, every word, and every punctuation adhere to company standard. That’s a lot of reviews by a lot of people and eventually, every word I’ve written will be completely rewritten and then my documentation will be stamped with approval.

Sounds ridiculous but that’s the way documentation is done here at NI. So that makes me wonder, whether the final product would look any different if it was written by someone else here at NI.

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