As a technical writer, ChatGPT offers an opportunity to streamline the API documentation process. Let’s dive into how to harness ChatGPT’s capabilities to create a ready-to-use Open API aka Swagger spec template. This guide is designed to benefit both newcomers to ChatGPT and experienced technical writers, to help you accelerate tech document creation and explore some of ChatGPT’s capabilities. REST API TEMPLATE – Download this 28-page MS Word template to document your REST/Web APIs. This template pack includes detailed examples, guidelines, and screenshots. Full details here: REST API Te ..read more

API documentation skills are increasingly in demand as businesses looked to API-ify their product lines. If you’re interested in learning about APIs from a documentation perspective, I’d suggest you connect with the following tech writers on Twitter. 1. Kristen Pol – is a technical writer who shares insights and resources related to API documentation. 2. Tom Johnson – often discusses API documentation and provides valuable information for technical writers in this field. 3. Sara Turner – is a technical writer with a focus on APIs and developer documentation. 4. Ravi Sagar – frequently tweets a ..read more

In the tech document community, Markdown is often praised for its simplicity and ease of use, making it a popular choice among writers. It is particularly effective for rapid prototyping of small projects and is supported by tools like Docusaurus and GitHub Pages. However, its simplicity becomes a limitation when dealing with complex documentation requirements, such as versioning or localization. The article evaluates Markdown’s suitability for technical documentation, contrasting it with more complex formats, in particular, DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). Moving from DITA (Darw ..read more

In technical documentation, you have many options when selecting the ‘right’ tool for your tech pubs department. In the following articles, we’ll identify, test, and help you select the solution that reflects your business and technical needs. From one angle, the choice depends on the tech stack and specific documentation needs. Lightweight Markdown/MkDocs is fine for basic docs while Sphinx has more features. Doxygen and Javadoc are used for in-depth API docs. Let’s look at some of the more popular tools, then we’ll go into the finer details. Confluence Description: Confluence is a collabora ..read more

Is there anything worse than sending out an important document and then, just when it’s gone, finding a typo? Always leave time to check your documents before you send them out. Here’s a checklist to get you started. Proof-reading Checklist Select the entire document – CTRL+A – then click the Language option at the bottomrof the screen. It might say English (United States). Mark the selected text as the language it should be set to. Click Set as Default. Press F7 to start the spellchecker. In the spelling results, click ignore all to ignore the same issue throughout the document. Click Add if ..read more

Updated: 11.11.2023. Follow at X / Twitter To quote Van Halen, ‘everybody wants some.’ And what you want is traffic. Why write a blog if no-one visits, right? I have 17 technical writers’ blogs in my Google Reader & RSS feeds. Most are fine but… if they used some of the following tactics, they’d get more traffic, comments, money and Nobel prizes. Well, three out of four, anyway. Download: Technical Writing Templates How To Get More Traffic To Your Technical Writing Blog Apply five of these tactics and your traffic will double. No kidding, it will! How To Get More Traffic #1: Add Your Photo ..read more

KB from London heard that I use Twitter to find work. Like many of us, she thought Twitter was a waste of time and ignored it. Maybe we can change her mind. How I use Twitter to find technical writing work Here’s how I use it. Create a twitter account for your business. Add a keyword into the title, for example, if you’re an accountant, call your twitter account @Accounting140 – accountancy tips in 140 characters. Add links to your website in the profile. Add your business logo. It has to look professional. Go to oDesk and spend $100 on a nice new logo and design. Learn how to create Twitter l ..read more

If you’ve followed the previous steps, you should have now a good technical summary, at least a decent working draft.  You should have also saved a considerable amount of time, especially if you fed (i.e. trained) Chat-GPT with material from different documents, spreadsheets, and notes. I suspect doing this by hand would take considerably longer. Of course, you still need to proof the material, check for accuracy, and confirm any sources it cited. Interestingly, there are other ways you can get Chat-GPT to improve the quality of the summary. As mentioned earlier, I use Claude for most of ..read more

In part 3 of this CHAT-GPT writing tutorial, we’re looking at how to use Chat-GPT to refie the first draft of your summary, especially those of a technical nature. As mentioned, at this point you should have a draft summary. While that’s fine as a starting point, we can now refine the material with a few prompt tweaks. Here’s seven ways to refine the draft summaries: Ask Chat-GPT to only include the most salient points in a summary. This keeps it focused and concise. Write, “Please include only the 3-5 most important points.” Request a one-sentence abstract followed by a 1-paragraph summary t ..read more

If you’re a technical writer, you probably spend a certain amount of time every week summarizing material. Some of this might be informal, such as condensing the notes you took at a meeting whereas other summaries may have a more formal purpose. For example, as part of a user guide, technical proposal, or a project status report.  Why use Chat-GPT to write summaries? Recently, I’ve started to use CHAT-GPT as a type of ‘summary writer assistant’. My aim was to see if it can save me some time in drafting summary material, speed up the process, and also refine the quality of my own summaries ..read more