Technical Writing Quotes

My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

The success of the documentation efforts lies in the users being able to correctly locate and use the resolutions to their issues on time and retain that knowledge for later use. ~ Suyog Ketkar

Forms of expression that unnecessarily specify gender are widely regarded as sexist. In technical writing, sexist usage is easy to avoid. ~ Justin Zobel

I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction. ~ Ted Chiang

How much ever we may underpin cognitive learning theories in technical communication and document design, the users invariably learn more when they are unknowingly
involved in the learning process: users learn more when they aren't learning. Conclusively, we must focus on experimentation and empowerment, and not on learning alone. ~ Suyog Ketkar

Users notice good design only when it is missing. ~ Suyog Ketkar

As a technical communicator, I am an enabler of
information. ~ Suyog Ketkar

Contextualization lies in bringing out the right messages from the abundant content; in sandwiching the subject between the background of information and the foreground of its utility. ~ Suyog Ketkar

Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there. ~ Walter Benjamin

I don't just strictly sample. I build. I'm a musician: I play piano and drums, I read notes, I write music. ~ AraabMuzik

Late night writing is also good, too, but in New York, you've got neighbors. I try to be a good neighbor. ~ Sara Bareilles

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it! ~ Robert B. Parker

The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you're going before you even start. That's a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It's much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more - I want to say 'sophisticated.' ~ Betty White

Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches. ~ Herman Melville

Publishing a book is like planting a vegetable seed. The first day your book is out there is the same as seeing the first sprout from the ground. Is it ready for harvest? Obviously not. The fruit of your labor is still to come so long as you continue to nurture the soil by being persistent in letting readers know your book exists. If you give up on this process too early, your seed will dry up and be consumed by a most merciless sun. ~ Kevin Ortegel

If you can't write your message in a sentence, you can't say it in an hour. ~ Dianna Daniels Booher

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Only assholes write plays about Nazis. ~ David Lindsay-Abaire

Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them. ~ Flannery O'Connor

It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one - And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press. ~ Charles Darwin

The fact is that if the writer's attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in itself, he is going to take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to this central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses. They call attention to themselves and distract from the work as a whole. ~ Flannery O'Connor

All of the writing on '30 Rock' is a joy to go into. It's pretty hot stuff. ~ Elaine Stritch

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become. ~ Dan Chaon

I've used the common wooden pencil in some of my writing as an example. When I ask audiences which is "simpler", a digital pencil like Microsoft Word or a wooden pencil, people agree the wooden variety is simpler. Until I point out that Microsoft Word was written by eight programmers, while the wooden variety involved thousands, none of whom could appreciate the full complexity of harvesting lumber, mining graphite, smelting metals, making lacquer, growing rapeseed for oil, etc. The complexity was there in the pencil, but hidden from the user. ~ Brad Cox

The hardest part of ghost writing other people's stories is capturing their voices so that it isn't you talking, it's them. ~ Michael Robotham

I'm not the hands-on guy. I like writing the check, and I turn it over to the guys that make it happen, much like the way I ran my business. ~ Foster Friess

'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. ~ Gore Vidal

I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone's life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager's first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can't have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can't play it safe. Great writing isn't safe. ~ Dan Alatorre

You know, I always say musicians, they can do it on their own. They can practice their violin on their own. A painter can paint by himself. A writer can write by himself. But an actor needs a group, and the hardest thing about expanding your ability and your craft is to have a group to do it with that is of a caliber where you can grow even more. ~ Anne Archer

In writing, there is art. And in art there is craft ... ~ Susi Moore

Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways. ~ Peter Temple

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind. ~ Thomas Keneally

You have to be very clear with yourself about how you're going to spend your time. When a child is at school or napping, you need to realize that this is your writing time and you don't spend it surfing the Internet or reading. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

I think the goal with any writing, but especially narrative nonfiction, is to put the blockade of putting your thoughts in this unnatural medium of print and then trying to reach through that and actually convey what's going on, what you think, and make people laugh and recognize themselves while doing it. Definitely the laughing thing. ~ Sloane Crosley

But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all. ~ Alan Bennett

When they are performing in front of the public, they ought to have a sensation that's relatively easy, if the technical and the interpretive work was done before. ~ James Levine

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it. ~ William Zinsser

Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later will write or say something inappropriate. ~ Dennis Prager

Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, "Science for Science's sake" is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts since they are infinite in number. We must make a selection ... guided by utility ... Have we not some better occupation than counting the number of lady-birds in existence on this planet? ~ Henri Poincare

He began to write his thoughts and observations concerning the day's events [ ... ] It helped him better understand everything he had seen and done over the course of the day. ~ Christopher Paolini

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms:

* Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
* Don't use no double negatives.
* Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
* Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.
* Do not put statements in the negative form.
* Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
* No sentence fragments.
* Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
* Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
* If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
* A writer must not shift your point of view.
* Eschew dialect, irregardless.
* And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
* Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
* Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
* Writers should always hyphenate between ~ William Safire

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved. ~ Tara Brach

Writing is communication, and you don't know how you're doing until you put it in front of someone else's eyes. You also learn from critiquing other writers' work. ~ Carol Berg

I write every day. Writing is a necessity - like eating. ~ Mary MacLane

I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms. ~ Ralph Ellison

If the director himself writes the script or screenplay of the drama, movie etc., the direction becomes perfect because he already imagined each shot nicely in his brain while writing the screenplay! ~ Md. Ziaul Haque