Spotlight: Learning about technical writing

Our community at Technically We Write includes professionals working as technical writers, technical editors, copyeditors, web content writers, and all other roles in technical communication. But we also have many readers who are studying about technical writing.

Today's students learn not just the theory behind writing, they also get to practice technical writing through projects and internships. In addition, Gen Z brings a familiarity with Generative AI like ChatGPT and Copilot, including how to leverage Gen AI and LLMs to help them with their writing, with the human in the loop so they can be more efficient.

To learn more about the next generation of technical writers, we interviewed a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota. Read on for one student's perspective in learning about technical writing.

Let's start with an introduction.

I am Alessandro Rasgattino, and I am a recent college graduate from the Technical Writing & Communication program at the University of Minnesota.

I also freelance in the field. I specialize in writing technical documentation, multimedia content creation, and digital communication. I have experience in a variety of fields, including interning and freelancing as a Content Writer for Gemini in the signage industry, a contracted Office Administrator for Neptune Society in the funeral industry, and a Partner Support Specialist for Clear Capital in the home real estate industry.

All these roles had me playing a vital role in writing, following, and/or managing important documentation, and they were what created and nurtured my passion for technical writing.

Did you have any favorite classes from your undergraduate program?

As a recent graduate of the technical writing program, I found classes that taught me skills and technologies that were directly applicable to technical writing to be my favorites. Especially ones that helped me directly with my work as a content writer and during the job-searching process. I think my top four classes that come to mind as having the biggest impact on me and my career are WRIT 4662W Writing with Digital Technologies, WRIT 4999 Technical Writing Capstone, WRIT 3441 Editing, Critique & Style, and WRIT 4501 Usability & Human Factors.

In my opinion, 4662W Writing with Digital Technologies is the technical writing program's strongest class offered as it gives students a full overview of the technical writing tools they will be exposed to in the field. From HTML, Markdown, DITA, Oxygen, and LibreOffice, I have had at least one of these tools always come up in a job interview when applying for technical writing positions, and I always reference back to this class. I have also been offered interviews due to these skills, such as DITA and Oxygen, being present in my resume.

The WRIT 4999 Technical Writing Capstone was a perfect continuation for me after 4662W, as I was able to use the skills and tools learned in that class to create new and exciting artifacts to help improve and expand my eportfolio, such as creating my LibreOffice college technical writing portfolio book to build my professional portfolio as I approached graduation.

WRIT 3441 Editing, Critique & Style really helped hone my skills as a writer and laid the groundwork for me to take my content writing work to the next level. From advanced grammar and editing practices, to getting a deeper understanding of style guide usage and creation, the class helped me greatly during my first time freelancing as a writer. I keep the textbook on hand whenever I do editing work as a great resource to refer to.

Lastly, WRIT 4501 Usability & Human Factors was the most intense teamwork I have done for a class. I was pleasantly surprised to find this much responsibility placed on students to create a deliverable for a real-world client through usability testing and heuristic evaluation. It was a very exciting and fulfilling project and challenge to take on as a student. It really taught me how to effectively run large projects that relied heavily on constant collaboration to meet client needs and produce recommendations. From the early processes of information gathering to researching, testing, analyzing data, and then presenting our findings. The class took me from start to finish on how to do a complete usability test to present a recommendation to solve a real-world problem a client has.

What interested you about technical writing?

I originally got my first exposure to technical writing as a Partner Support Specialist in the home real estate industry. Originally, my job was to help write logs while providing partner support through phone, text, and email to appraisers to set up home inspections. Due to the industry being very fast-paced, our best practices were always changing as industry and customer direction changed. One of the side projects I took at the time was to edit and update the best practices us Partner Support Specialists follow. My boss recommended it to me as I was a very big note taker, so I knew a lot about how these processes operated, as I had made notes of each operation change in every meeting.

I found this side project to be more exciting and fulfilling than my actual role as a Partner Support Specialist. So when it came time for me to create a project to be promoted to a Partner Support Specialist 2, I created a large, cohesive training guide to be provided as supplemental material. The document had all the most commonly asked questions from the newest to the more experienced members of the team. Each question and its answer needed to be easily accessible within a minute to allow for on-the-moment usage if the reader was on a phone call with an appraiser and needed to answer a question asked at the moment. When I sent out the training manual to members of my team to test, it got praise from team members, even ones who have had years in the industry, saying it contained information even they didn't know about, and it was a big help.

I had such joy creating and working with procedural and training documentation that I told myself, If I could do this as my job, I would come to work excited every day. So when I was meeting with my career counselor to find what major I should pursue, I stumbled across technical writing. I never heard of it before, but when I did research and realized it was like what I was doing as a side project in Clear Capital. I knew then that I had to pursue this as a career. I researched what universities had good technical writing programs and learned of the University of Minnesota's strong technical writing program. After community college, I transferred to the university. It was then, while attending the university, that I was offered my first internship. After working at my internship for the first few weeks, I knew I found my dream job as I would catch myself talking about work, excited to tell friends and family about the exciting manuals I was writing.

When I majored in technical writing, I also had to decide on what emphasis within technical writing I wanted to pursue. For me, it was an obvious choice. Before I desired to be a technical writer, I was actually mentoring under a professional artist to become a concept artist. However, I found that art was more of a hobby for me than something I could feel comfortable turning into a job. Additionally, I absolutely love technology. Computers, gaming systems, monitors, phones, cars, speakers—if it runs, I want to know how it works. So the technology and design emphasis scratched that itch I have to be working with design and technology, combining them with my passion for writing technical and instructional documentation.

What are some overall lessons you learned about technical writing?

I have one main takeaway from technical writing, and it is my guiding philosophy whenever I am making a decision on how to explain a topic or tool. I personally believe that if a user watches or reads a tutorial and they don't understand the material, that is not a fault of the user. It is the fault of the instructions. This is why I have told and even reassured friends and family, if you don't know how to do something, even after reading the manual, it's not because you are not smart enough. It's because the manual did not do a good enough job of explaining. I believe mostly anyone can do almost anything with the right set of instructions.

That is why I love technical writing so much. I am given the opportunity to provide support to people and teach them how to properly use or operate a tool or technology. It gives me the biggest thrill seeing the aha! moment in people when they finally understand how to do or use something to achieve their goal or task. I find it fulfilling to be the one to figure out how to do or use something, so that I can then explain it and teach it to others to make their lives easier. Especially since I love learning and a good challenge.

Do you have a favorite writing tool or app?

I have two main tools I absolutely love using ever since they were taught to me in the 4662W: HTML and Markdown course.

After learning HTML, it has, in a sense, replaced the need for Photoshop when it comes to making simple supplemental images for instruction manuals. Now, if I need to change the text or remove a button from a website to use for an instruction manual visual, I can simply modify the website's HTML locally through browser developer tools and then take a screenshot of the changes. This is much more efficient than having to go into Photoshop and find the exact typeface used on the site, manually remove interface elements, and adjust icon layout.

HTML has also been helpful when I am working on websites or tools like Google Sites. If I need to include an artifact or video on my site and it's not appearing just the way I want, I can simply adjust the embedded HTML/iframe code so it appears as intended.

Markdown has also been a joy to know. If HTML has been the main tool I have been using in my professional life, Markdown is the one I use the most in my personal life. From WhatsApp, Docs, Discord, and more, if it has me sending text, it will most likely support Markdown to let me bold and italicize text, and use headings to better express myself. I have actually shown it to my family and friends, with some of them jokingly referring to it as my technical writing skill, which makes me smile.

Have you worked on any projects or internships?

During summer last year, I was fortunate to be hired by Gemini as an intern Content Writer to help create how-to articles for their brand new Partner Portal. The job was very exciting and challenging, and since this website was brand new, I had to be the one to figure out and test how the website operated and then document my experiences into how-to articles for company partners to use. This also involved lots of collaboration between team members, both in and out of the marketing team I was a part of, such as the UX team. We would be given a test account to test the portal's new features, and then use our findings to create our instruction manuals in Word, while the portal was still in its testing phase.

I was also given the pleasure of helping create Gemini's first printed publication, Signage Spotlight. For this project, I worked with both the marketing and product teams to spotlight Gemini's latest and greatest offerings, partner projects, and coworker interviews while working with our designer. This involved creating and repurposing articles in Word documents and working with the designer to ensure the documents translate well to the InDesign file when put in the publication.

Both projects really trained my team collaboration and information gathering skills, as I needed to have an understanding of Gemini's product offerings and marketing direction before writing manuals and spotlight content for said products. This meant scheduling meetings with leaders from UX and product teams and interviewing them to get the information I needed to write manuals and article pieces regarding the products they were working on.

The following summer, I was again hired, but as a freelancer this time, for a project relating to updating the Partner Portal's articles. At this point, with what I learned from the technical writing program, I was able to use HTML I learned from WRIT 4999 to help create visual documentation to supplement these articles, such as updating text through the portal's local HTML to then take a screenshot to use, skipping the need for constant Photoshopping. This was an especially helpful skill when working with test accounts and the limitations they come with (such as not being able to create real orders to visually document certain steps in articles).

I also kept my WRIT 3441 textbook on hand as I wrote and edited work, even referring back to certain previous assignments done in class to get a good sense of direction on how to handle edits. This helped me determine during the revision process which edits could be easily done without much notice, and which ones did require additional direction. This would be due to a change in instructional direction or conflict with previously set writing conventions by our internal Partner Portal study guide, which I wrote the initial draft for at the end of my internship.

I also kept in mind the usability and heuristic principles taught to me in WRIT 4501. I would ask myself: Are there multiple ways to achieve the same result? If so, am I presenting this information to promote flexibility and efficiency for users, new and experienced? or Am I being consistent with how I label buttons, links, and support icons between all 30 documents so as not to confuse readers? It was small decisions that to some outside eyes might not mean much, but make all the difference when you have actual users using the manuals to view and submit orders.

Now that I have graduated this December, I will be working on some personal projects while I job hunt. These include making final revisions on my LibreOffice college technical writing portfolio book. It is a collection of all my best work from my time in the technical writing program, and will be sent to be printed into a physical book for me to showcase. This will be one of two books I will be sending to print, as I will be writing another book in LibreOffice for the charity I am a part of, Guerreras De Oración.

I am also looking into the idea of starting my own technical writing blog where I discuss technical writing tools, practices, and viewpoints from the perspective of a Gen Z graduate entering the field. Especially now that AI has become such a hot-button topic, and younger generations have more experience using it day to day, I think sharing my insight and starting conversations on the topic would be a great way to add to the technical writing community.

What are you looking for next?

Now that I have finished college, I am looking for my first technical writing (or technical writing adjacent) job, specifically in the tech sector. That being said, I am open to entering a sector I might not have initially considered, especially with my history of being a part of a variety of different industries, like the home real estate, funeral, and signage industries. I am never one to say no to new opportunities.

Though if I did have to voice a preference, I'd like a job relating to detailing processes or tool/technology documentation. Potentially something with a hybrid work-from-home/in-office arrangement. I have experience in both, and I find each to have its own strengths and drawbacks. Fortunately, my experience allows me to comfortably work either as an in-office contract or employed writer or a remote freelance writer, depending on the needs of the job.

That being said, as long as I can continue to stay in this career field I have fallen in love with, I am glad to have any opportunity to grow as a technical writer. Even beyond just getting a job, be it interviews, additional self-learning, or even personal technical writing projects I take on.

To learn more, check out Alessandro's web portfolio for detailed examples about key skills and technologies that Alessandro has learned as an undergraduate student. Or visit Alessandro on LinkedIn.