Our first year at Technically We Write

I've worked in the IT field for my entire career, including serving as Chief Information Officer in higher education and government, but I've always found time for technical and professional writing. Starting my own company, Hallmentum, about four or five years ago gave me the freedom to do more technical writing on the side. I used to contribute as a volunteer technical writer for publications including Linux Journal and Opensource.com, where I wrote about Linux, programming, and open source software.

In February 2023, I wanted to expand the venues where I published my work. I wanted to write about writing but I couldn't find open publications on that topic. Instead, I decided to start a new community website where everyone could share their tips and advice about writing tools, technologies, and methods. I started the planning phase for what would become Technically We Write in March 2023, and I accelerated the website in April, going live in May.

What you've shared

In our first seven months, our contributors shared over 200 articles that range in topics, covering different writing tools and digital writing technologies including how to write your first HTML file, your journey in technical writing, how to write more clearly, career options in technical writing, writing DITA with Oxygen, and how to be a great copywriter. There is no "one" topic to write about.

We've consistently published one article every day during the "work" week. In the first few months, we aimed for "seven days a week"—but our readership tends to dip slightly over the weekends, so we've since focused on publishing during the "work" week when more folks are looking for articles.

We welcome articles of any length; don't worry about writing too little or too much about a topic. The average length of your articles is 800 words, with a median of 730 words. Overall, most articles are between 500 and 1,200 words.

An open community

Technically We Write welcomes anyone who wants to share an article. You don't have to be a "professional" technical writer to contribute, because everyone does some kind of technical or professional writing, no matter what role you're in. We welcome everyone to contribute to Technically We Write.

You can write your first article about any number of topics: Tell us about your favorite features in the text editor you use every day .. or describe how to start a document in a text processing system like LaTeX, groff, Markdown, or some other system .. or explain how someone can write a few lines of HTML to create their first website .. or narrate your personal story about why you love writing .. or show how to create a print-ready document in your favorite page layout program. The list of possible topics is endless.

Don't worry about duplication. We may have run an article on a similar theme before, but we want your spin on the topic. There's a reader for every kind of article on every kind of topic. Don't worry about if someone else wrote about that same topic, you will bring a new perspective to the solution.

Our community wants to hear from you about what tools and technologies you like to use, and how to use them effectively. We encourage you to write with us and share your story. 

Looking ahead to 2024

We're excited to look ahead to 2024. We aim to shine the light on you, and we can do that best by maintaining a "hands off" approach so we don't alter your writing "voice." To that end, we try to do only "light editing" by default; we check for typos, US/UK spelling, and obvious grammar errors. If you would like more help in refining your article, let us know and we'll work more closely with you to make it great. As we continue to grow and expand, we plan to hire a freelance "staff editor" to help with this process.

We accept article submissions in any format. Some contributors share an article with us via Google Docs, others send their article in HTML, plain text, Asciidoc, or Markdown format. We'll also gladly accept files in Microsoft Word DOCX or LibreOffice Writer ODT format.

Join us by sharing an article on your favorite topic. Contact our editors to share your article ideas.