The most important part of technical writing is documenting properly. No doubt, technical documentation is complex as well as time-consuming. At the same time, it is boring. But does technical writing means only documentation? In fact, technical writing needs an in-depth understanding of the product and service and target customers. Does that mean technical writing is challenging? Yes, it is!

When you are a technical writer, you need to pen- down every technical detail to make an interesting and informative document. Besides, it should be free of grammatical mistakes and plagiarism free. Hence, to help technical writers, there are many software tools for technical writing that generate top-notch documents.

What is Technical Writing?

Before we learn about top software tools for technical writing, if a technical writer’s role is confusing to you, then here is a brief explanation.

A technical writer is a special category of a content writer who explains using technology to a non-technical person in an easy-to-understand language. It is a kind of technical communication to convey complex information and clearly. A technical writer’s job is often a collaborative effort where he or she needs to work together with editors, graphic designers, content managers, document specialists, analysts, and many other roles depending on the organization to produce stellar content.

Furthermore, technical documentation can be of any type among the following ones:

• Policy documents
• Knowledgebase articles
• Online and embedded help
• Simulations
• Training manuals

Related post – Code editors which works best for Web developers in 2020

Why is Technical Writing Important?

Documentation is an important part of any technical project. Whether it is related to software applications, consumer products, or industrial equipment, its specification and functionalities must be simplified to the target audience to make it handy. At the same time, quality technical writing helps avoid misinterpretation of the product functionalities while preventing human errors.

Furthermore, based on good documentation, users can obtain useful, accurate, and relevant information that easily pursues defined goals. Hence, technical writing is a helpful medium to do a project in an organized way. However, what is the available tools that technical writers use to utilize for their purpose? Let’s explore 10 such software tools for technical writing!

List of top 10 software tools for technical writing

Not to mention, tools like Microsoft Word, Notepad, or Google docs are the must-have tools when you are in any computer-based documenting job. However, technical writing tools have taken many forms to produce the best output. When you are in technical writing, then writing is not the sole part of your job. You need to deal with technical diagrams, images, screen capture, and many more activities. Hence, based on the types of activities, we have categorized the software tools for technical writing into the following categories:

Authoring tools (on-premise and cloud-based)

Screen Capturing tools

Image Editing tools

Publishing tools

Spell check tools

Authoring tools

Tool #1: Microsoft Word

For content writing, Microsoft Word is the first tool that every technical writer considers the authoring tool. This simple yet elegant tool comes with a rich set of features. These features make Microsoft Word the best tool for content writers:

• Automatic spell checker, inbuilt grammar check capability, and highlighter.
• Pre-loaded document templates such as flyers, brochures, technical whitepapers, troubleshooting guides, and so on
• Reviewing feature like tracks changes
• Find and Replace feature that helps to replace a word across the entire document
• Inbuilt feature of saving a document to different formats such as PDF, web page, XPS, Rich Text Format (RTF), plain text, and more.

Tool #2: Notepad / Notepad++

Notepad is the default text editor of Windows. Usually, contents like simple text file content like ReadMe file, or License Agreement file are written using notepad. This is useful when you don’t need rich formatting. Moreover, it is ideal for taking quick notes during meetings. Notepad++ has additional features like spell check, find and replace, and many more.

Tool # 3 Google Docs

Google Docs is a multi-user collaboration tool that comes free and is available as a part of Google Drive. Using this tool, multiple users can collaborate and curate content together on a specific topic. Since almost every business operation today is cloud-based, this tool is being adopted by most businesses to increase the efficiency of their staff and make information readily available on the cloud.

Furthermore, with Google Docs, there is no worry of versioning problems for the documentation. Also, it helps to discover who is working on the document at a given moment as users make changes to the content. Besides, changes are automatically saved every few minutes to Google Drive. Hence, there is no chance of missing information or data.

There are three options in Google Docs — Editing, Suggesting, and Viewing. You can directly edit the document; however, the changes will not be tracked. Suggesting enables you to track and edits your suggestions. Finally, you can read or print the final document from the Viewing mode option.

Tool #4 : MarkdownPad

Initially launched in the market as an alternative to HTML, Markdown has gained a lot of attention these days. Using Markdown, you can easily create web pages using plain text writing even if you don’t have much HTML experience. However, with its growing popularity, now this tool is being used to take notes, make lists, and so on.

This software tool for technical writing uses simple formatting syntax, whereas there is no extra syntax used for a specific operation. This is very similar to HTML syntaxes. Furthermore, there is no need for any WYSIWYG editors to get started with Markdown. Any plain text editor is ok to create content using the Markdown syntax.

In this context, MarkdownPad is the most popular Markdown document editor, which is widely used by technical writers. You will get many customization options like fonts, colors, schemes, layouts, and sizes in it. Along with that, it has a built-in CSS editor that supports custom CSS stylesheets. You can quickly convert their written text documents into HTML or even export them as PDFs.

Features:

• Auto-save
• Built-in image uploader
• Configurable automatic updates
• Session management

Screen Capturing tools

When you are a technical writer, you often need to document applications or products that need screenshots along with it. It works as the face of your application or product. There are hundreds of tools available in the market for taking screenshots; however, it needs correct screen resolution settings. Besides, the screen capturing tool must have the ability to edit the picture as per the requirement. Here are the two most popular tools used in technical writing.

Tool #5: Snipping Tool

The snipping tool comes pre-built with Windows, with which you can grab the screenshot of the entire screen or even just a portion of the screen using its rectangular snip option. The tool also has a pen tool that can highlight the selected text to make it look prominent. Furthermore, the image can be saved into different formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, or HTML. Furthermore, you can directly email the snippet as an attachment to an email address.

Tool #6: Snagit

Snagit is a powerful screen capturing tool that supports multiple operating systems like Windows and MacOS. After capturing the screen, you can save them as. JPG, .PNG, and share them to different outputs like FTP, file, Camtasia studio, Screencast, and many more. Furthermore, you can enhance the screenshots with arrows, circles, frames, etc., with Snagit.

Features: 

• Captures drop-down menus
• Panoramic scrolling capture
• Borders and image effects
• Exports to cloud storage

Image editing tools

Images are a mandatory part of articles or blog posts, whether it is technical or non-technical. However, not all royalty-free images are used as-is. Sometimes, it requires editing or embedding text into it. This needs proper screen editing, which is generally performed by graphic designers. However, you will not always get the privilege to access a web design team. Hence, knowledge of image editing software is also an essential part of a technical writing job.

Tool #7: Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most used technical writers’ tools as per the survey organized by Writers UA User Assistance Tool Survey. As a technical writer, you can use Photoshop for editing graphics and creating images from scratch. Hence, technical writers must understand the know-how of Photoshop. However, learning Photoshop is a little tough.

Publishing tools

Tool #8: Adobe FrameMaker

If you are interested in single-source authoring that is writing content and re-using the existing content, then Adobe FrameMaker is the right tool for that. It is ideal for industrial standard documentation that can span over 200+ pages. This is a DITA friendly authoring tool with an option of PDF formatting and a built-in print feature.

Furthermore, you can draft content according to the defined template. You can also generate a Table of Contents, automatic hyperlinks, a List of Tables, and a List of Figures with this tool. However, the tool has a steep learning curve and also expensive.

Tool #9: RoboHelp

Technical writer primarily uses RoboHelp to publish online documentation. This is one of the handy Help Authoring Tool (HAT) from Adobe Systems. Using this tool, technical writers can develop help documents and use them across different formats. Businesses widely use RoboHelp for delivering online help content and knowledgebase articles.

RoboHelp supports output in the following formats —

• HTML5 help format
• XML
• Printed documents
• Mobile App formats
• WebHelp formats
• eBook

The user-friendly interface of RoboHelp enables users to publish content without any hassles. However, getting ease with the tool is a little difficult. Besides, it is not ideal for collaboration since the content resides within the tool. Furthermore, the tool is costly, which is often not suitable for independent technical writers.

Spell check tools

Content quality is one of the vital criteria for a technical writer or blogger, and correct spelling and grammar are its integral part. It is not very difficult to write content but making it proofread, and perfect is the hardest part of any content writing. Hence, grammar checking tools are a must-have for content writing.

Tool #10: Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the popular tools used by the most technical and content writers. Grammarly comes as a free and premium version and can be used as an online text editor. It works as a free extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers. The tool instantaneously highlights the mistakes and also offers suggestions to improve or correct the errors. Besides, Grammarly also has a feature of plagiarism checking.

Final Verdict

Finally, technical writers work in different industries; however, a technical writer is primarily responsible for generating quality documentation irrespective of the industry. Hence, they need to select the right tools to serve the purpose. So, before using a tool, know the features of it, and get acquainted with it. Furthermore, selecting the right tool will help to generate quality content and grab users.