Technical Writing Checklist

Won't bore you with text soup. Research these items. Complete the knowledge checklist.

Grammar

    Articles

    hyphen en-dash, em-dash

    Oxford comma

    semi-colons: rewrite in separate sentences

    gerund (-ing) forms

    capitalization

    quotes

    Noun stacks and verb stacks

    Adjectives and Adverbs

    Subject-verb agreement

    

Construction

Even if your content is grammatically correct, there are few pointers that you must consider on top of what you want to write.

    Paragraph

        Length - 3 to 6 lines

    Sentence

        Length: 14-18 words

        Compound Sentences - No

    Unnumbered and Numbered Lists

    Chunking, Parallelism, Ordering

    Balance

    Flow    

    Tone: Formal, Optimistic, Friendly, Curious, Assertive, Encouraging, Cooperative

        Negatives and Double Negatives: Avoid and Strictly Avoid

    Tense: Present Simple. Use Future tense and Gerunds sparingly.

    Voice: Active

    Mood: Indicative, Imperative

    Word-Substitution: Use the simplest word of all synonyms.

Formatting

    bold, italics, underline

    highlights

    font: family, color, size

    

Use of graphics and animation

    size, format, quality

    labeling

    annotations

    embedding and linking