Technical writing is an essential skill of conveying complex technical information in an easy-to-understand way.

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• Technical writing
  • Courses for beginners
  • Textbooks and tutorials
  • Editorial style guides for technical writing
  • General purpose editorial style guides
  • Dictionaries
• Technical illustrations
• Authoring formats
  • Markdown
  • reStructuredText
  • DITA
  • S1000D
• Text automatic processing
  • Regular expression
  • XSL
  • PowerShell

If you are completely new to technical writing, the following 🔔 courses are the best start points for you:

• Google Technical Writing Courses for Engineers - A practical technical writing course for beginners, featuring examples and metaphors that all programmers are familiar with.
  • Google Technical Writing Courses for Engineers (China)
• GitLab Technical Writing Fundamentals Course - A four-video course teaching how to write and edit GitLab documentation.
• Coursera: Introduction to Technical Writing - A systematic introduction to technical writing, including the features, workflow, software and tools, history and futures, etc.

Now, you have known a bit of technical writing 👏! Not enough for you? Let's go further 🤠!

To learn a new skill or a new subject systematically, there is nothing better than 📚 academic textbooks and tutorials self-published by experienced professionals at work. Here you are, enjoy 😄!

• Software Technical Writing: A Guidebook - A technical writer at a computer vision startup confessed his daily work in every detail.
• Documentation APIs: A Guide for Technical Writers and Engineers - Tom Johnson, a senior technical writer at Google and the founder of the popular blog I'd Rather Be Writing, teach you how to write documentation for API step by step.
• Documentation Guide - A living guide on best practices for creating software documentation, developed and maintained by the Write the Docs community.
• Developing Quality Technical Information: A Handbook for Writers and Editors (IBM Press) - A must-read book of technical writers for all time, even though it is not a free resource.
• Open Technical Communication - An open textbook authored by five professionals at Kennesaw State University, which has been revised and updated to 4th edition.

Learning by doing, rather than learning by reading. It's time to write or imporve your own technical documentation using the writing skills you have studied!

But wait a minute, you still need to adopt an 📙 editorial style guide for technical writing at first. If you never know or forget what editorial sytle guides are or why you need one, go back to the Google Technical Writing Courses for Engineers for a refresher.

• ASD-STE100 Simplied Technical English - An international specification containing a set of writing rules and a controlled dictionary, which is widely used in aerospace and defense industry and other manufacturing industries.
• The IBM Style Guide - A popular book first published by IBM Press in 2011, which emphasizeds a helpful, direct, and authoritative tone and topic-based writing (DITA).
• Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide - A style guide for all kinds of technical documentations, including training and examination content. It emphasizes a formal writing sytle, with IBM Style Guide as the preferred reference.
• Red Hat Supplementary Style Guide for Product Documentation - A style guide supplementary to the IBM Style Guide, which provides format examples in AsciiDoc.
• Microsoft Writing Style Guide - A style guide for computer technology and software documentations, which emphasizes a warm and relax conversational voice.
• Google Developer Documentation Style Guide - A style guide for software documentations, which emphasizes a casual and natural conversational tone with specific format recommendations for HTML and Markdown.
• GitLab Documentation Style Guide - A style guide for open source software documentations written in Markdown, which emphasizes topic-based writing and format guidelines for Markdown.
• SUSE Documentation Style Guide - A style guide for software documentations, which emphasizes a professional tone and comprehensive markup reference for DocBook.
• Apple Style Guide - A style guide for Apple materials, nothing special.

In the real world, anything is possible. Take a suitable 📙 general purpose editorial style guide at hand, in case you step into an unknown situation someday.

• University of Oxford Style Guide Quick Reference - A one-page quick reference guide with the most commonly requested information.
• University of Oxford Style Guide - A 30-page sytle guide to writing and formatting documents consistently.
• Chicago Manual of Style - A widely used style guide over 1000 pages, which was published continuously since 1906 and now is in its 17th edition (subscription required).
• AMA Manual of Style - A widely used style guide in medical and scientific publishing, which was published continuously since 1962 and now is in its 11th edition (subscription required).

And you know, select a suitable 📘 dictionary too!

• American Heritage Dictionary
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A picture is worth a thousand words.

High-tech industries usually rely heavily on technical illustrations in their technical documentations, such as manufacturing, automotive, aerosapce, and defense. But unfortunately, there are few resources available 🤓.

• Technical Illustration in the 21st Century: A Primer for Today's Professionals - A white paper produced by Bettina Giemsa at PTC.
• The State of Technical Illustration and Documentation - A survey report on technical illustration and documentation market, conducted by Corel in 2022.

Technical illustrators used to use software like Adobe Illustrator or CAD to create technical illustrations. But now, 💻 softwares specially made for technical illustrations are becoming more and more popular.

• Arbortext IsoDraw Data Sheet and Arbortext IsoDraw Online Help - A commercial software for technical illustrations developed by PTC.
• SOLIDWORKS Composer and SOLIDWORKS Composer Help - A commercial software for technical illustrations developed by SolidWroks.
• XVL Studio 3D CAD Corel Edition - A commercial software for technical illustrations developed by CorelDRAW.
• XVL Technical Illustration Suite - A suite of commercial softwares for technical illustrations developed by Lattice Technology.

Going with the trend of Docs as Code, more and more organizations and their technical writers have ditched word processors and switched to markup languages.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language created by John Gruber in 2004. It has become a commonly used markup language to write technical documentations, especially those software documentations that host in GitHub or GitHub-like platforms.

If you are completely new to Markdown, the following 📔 guide is the best start point for you:

• Markdown Guide - A concise, barebones guide for Markdown beginners.
• John Gruber's Markdown Documentation

Now, you have known a bit of Markdown 👏. It is easy-to-read, easy-to-write, and easy-to-learn, isn't it 😎?

Can't wait to try it out? Just adopt a ✒️ Markdown editor, then you are ready 💪!

• Dillinger - A concise in-browser Markdown editor, which can create new files, export the files to Markdown, HTML, or PDF, synchronize with GitHub, Google Drive, or Dropbox repositories, etc.
• StackEdit - An in-browser Markdown editor with rich functions, which can create new files or new folders, export the files to Markdown or HTML, synchronize with GitHub, Google Drive, or Dropbox accounts, etc.
• Visual Studio Code (VS Code) - A code editor developed by Microsoft, with built-in Markdown preview and many Markdown extentions.
  • Markdown All in One - An extension to enrich Markdown features in VS Code, such as automatic creation of table of contents, auto completions, printing Markdown files to HTML.
  • Markdown Table Maker - An extention to generate Markdown tables in an easy and intuitive way.
  • Markdown PDF - An extenstion to convert Markdown files to PDF, PNG, JPEG, or HTML.
  • Markdown Preview Enhanced - An extention to enrich Markdown features in Atom and VS Code, featuring the integration of Pandoc.

If you go deeper, you will find the controversy over Markdown.

As Markdown got popular, more and more Markdown parsers appeared. However, Markdown has no well-accepted standard untill now. The Markdown syntax in each parser is to some extent different from others.

As a result, every time you choose a new Markdown tool, you had better read through its 📙 user manual or documentation to know exactly what Markdown syntax it supports.

• GitHub Docs: Writing on GitHub - Basic Markdown syntax supported on GitHub.
• GitHub Flavored Markdown Specification
• Markdown DITA Syntax - Markdown styntax in DITA Open Toolkit, which is the most commonly used engine for DITA publishing.
• MDITA Syntax - Markdown syntax for Lightweight DITA in DITA Open Toolkit, which is the most commonly used engine for DITA publishing.
• Pandoc's Markdown - Markdown syntax of Pandoc, a universal document converter, which can convert between various formats.
• kramdown Quick Reference and kramdown Syntax - Markdown syntax of kramdown, which is the default Markdown parser for Jekyll.

If you like to explore more resources about Markdown, see Awesome Markdown.

reStructuredText is a lightweight markup language that is more well-defined compared to Markdown and widely used for Python documentation.

If you are completely new to reStructuredText, the following 📔 introductions and tutorials are the best start points for you:

• Introduction to reStructuredText
• A ReStructuredText Primer - An informal introduction to reStructuredText written by Richard Jones.
• reStructuredText Primer - A brief introduction to reStructuredText in Sphinx documentation.

Now, you have known a bit of reStructuredText 👏. Just adopt a ✒️ reStructuredText editor, then you can try it out 🍧!

• Online reStructuredText editor
• Visual Studio Code (VS Code) - A code editor developed by Microsoft, with reStructuredText extentions.
  • reStructuredText - An extension to provide rich reStructuredText language support in VS Code.
  • reStructuredText Syntax Highlighting - An extension to provide rich syntax highlighting and non-intrusive section navigation for reStructuredText in VS Code.

You may forget an unfrequently used syntax or not sure about a specific syntax during writing. Pick a 📔 cheatsheet or reference documentation at hand, which you will look for sooner or later.

• Quick reStructuredText - An online cheatsheet for reStructuredText syntax.
• reStructuredText Cheatsheet - A downloadable two-page cheatsheet for reStructuredText syntax.
• reStructuredText Markup Specification - A detailed technical specification for reStructuredText written by David Goodger.

DITA is an open source standard for creating topic-based strcutured technical documentations, which was originally created by IBM and was donated to OASIS in 2005.

It was initially spread to high-tech companies like Adobe, Siemens, and Kone, and then become more and more popular in all industries.

If you are completely new to DITA, the following 🔔 courses and tutorials are the best start points for you:

• LearningDITA - Nine game-based courses for DITA beginners, developed and maintained by Scriptorium.
• DITA for the Impatient - A short DITA tutorial to teach the basics of DITA, developed by Hussein Shafie at XMLmind Software.

Now, you have known a bit of DITA 👏. It's time to practice 💃🕺!

That said, DITA is a bit complicated. Adopt a DITA-aware XML editor first, in case you are trapped in the tremendous DITA elements. Then, keep a 📙 book of DITA best practices at hand for reference at any time.

• DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA - A practical book about how to write effective technical information in DITA, published in 2011 by IBM Press (not a free resource).
• The DITA Style Guide: Best Practices for Authors - A style guide written in DITA 1.1 by Tony Self.

You can use DITA to improve your own technical documentation. If you don't have such resources, pick one of 📔 open source sample manuals written in DITA to see how it was written and think how to improve it.

• DITA Mini Manual - A 1960s Mini owner's manual rewritten in DITA.
• Pilot Training Mitchell Bomber - A pilot training manual (aviation document) rewritten in DITA.
• LwDITA Code Samples - Various manuals of a 1970s computer rewritten in Lightweight DITA.
• DITA Glossary Example - A book named On Yacht Sailing rewritten in DITA to demontrate how to implement glossories in DITA.

DITA has much more elements than Markdown and reStructuredText. If you encounter soemthing unknown, resort to 📘 official specifications.

• DITA Version 1.3 - The latest official specifications for DITA, which was released on Jun 19, 2018.
• Lightweight DITA: An Introduction Version 1.0 - The Committee Note 02 for Lightweight DITA, which was approved on Oct 30, 2018.

If you like to stay current with DITA developments, visit the 📁 official repositories in GitHub often.

• DITA Specification - The official repository for the source files of the DITA specification developed and maintained by the DITA Technical Committee.
• Leightweight DITA Specification - The official repository for source files of the Lightweight DITA specification developed and maintained by the Lightweight DITA Subcommittee.
• DITA Specializations - The official repository for DITA specializations that were developed by the DITA Technical Committee, but are no longer part of the DITA standard.

S1000D is an international specification for procurement and production of technical publications, which was initially developed for military aerospace industries and spread to various civil and military aeroamphibious equipments later.

S1000D is the most complicated standard for technical documentations. That means, there are rare free resources for self-study.

Here are the 📁 official specifications and implementations in specific industries.

• S1000D Specifications - All versions of official specifications for S1000D.
• ATA Spec 1000BR: Civil Aviation Business Rules for S1000D - An implementation of S1000D specification in civil aviation industry, which can not be accessd for free.
• S1000D DIG Business Rules - An implementation of S1000D specification in defense industries.
• The Shipdex Protocol: Issue 2.3 - An implementation of S1000D specification in shipping industry.

Equipping yourself with some programming skills will enable you to complete some really cool jobs, such as automating workflow and batch modifying.

A regular expression (regex) is a pattern that the regex engine can use to find or match substrings. Regex is extremely useful in finding and replacing texts or strings in text files.

If you are completely new to regex, the following 📙 tutorial is the best start point for you:

• Regular Expressions: The Complete Tutorial - An easy-to-understand and practical book for regex beginners written by Jan Goyvaerts.

Use an 💻 online tool to experiment the regexes in the tutorial or your own regexes. It will make your studying easy and interesting.

• Regex 101 - An online tool to build, test and debug regex.
• RegExr - An online tool to learn, build and test regex.

Take a 📔 cheatsheet or quick reference at hand to check the regex syntax at any time:

• Regular Expression Language: Quick Reference - A quick reference for regex from Microsoft.
• Regular Expression Syntax Cheat Sheet - A cheat sheet for regex in the JavaScript Guide from MDN Web Docs.

XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) is a styling language for XML. It consists of three parts: XSLT, XPath, and XSL-FO.

XSLT (XSL Transformations) is a language for tranforming XML documents. It is widely used in many purposes other than stylesheets, like transforming from one XML language to another, generating HTML pages from XML documents, etc.

• XSLT Tutorial - A tutorial for XSLT beginners, which is developed by W3Schools.
• XSLT Version 2.0: Second Edition - The latest official specification for XSLT, which was released on Mar 30, 2021.
• XSLT Version 3.0 - The official specification for XSLT 3.0, which was released on Jun 8, 2017.

XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language for navigating through elements and attributes in an XML document.

• XPath Tutorial - A tutorial for XPath beginners, which was developed by W3Schools.
• XPath 3.1 - The latest official specification for XPath, which was released on Mar 21, 2017.

XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) is a language for formatting XML documents. XSL-FO is also called XSL.

• XSL-FO Tutorial - A tutorial for XSL-FO beginners, which was developed by W3Schools.
• XSL-FO Tutorial - A learn-by-example tutorial for XSL-FO beginners, which provides a series of examples working in XEP.
• XSL Version 1.1 - The lastest official specification for XSL-FO, which was released on Dec 05, 206.

PowerShell is a task automation tool from Microsoft which is built into all versions of Windows.

• PowerShell 101 - A book for PowerShell beginners, the contents in which has been open to public by Microsoft on its website with permission.
• Everything You Want to Know about … - A series of articles about PowerShell, which were collected from PowerShell Explained by Microsoft.
• PowerShell Documentation - The official documentation for PowerShell 7.4.

If you like to explore more resources about PowerShell, see Awesome PowerShell.