If you’re like me, you never know what’s worth investing in, what’s worth buying (even if the thing is free), and what’s worth it. I mean, who doesn’t want value for their investment? It would be so great if there were a list of the best technical writing tools from those who have been there and done that. There are a lot of low-quality programs out there with lower prices. And it would be so nice to have a list of all the best writing tools from those who have tried them out.
Google Docs
It should almost go without saying, but Google Docs is the de facto writing tool for a lot of technical writers. It not only gives you full word processing right in your browser, but it also allows for easy comments and collaboration with other team members.
And oh yeah, it’s also free!
Grammarly
Google Docs (or Word) includes its own spelling/grammar checker. But for a more heavy-duty look, you can use Grammarly, which offers a comprehensive check for both grammar and style.
One of the nice things about using Grammarly for editing technical writing is that you can set “goals” for your writing which lets Grammarly adopt its style suggestions to your writing goals:
Trello
Trello is a really useful tool for managing technical writing projects. It doesn’t help with the writing itself, but it does help with managing your writing and tracking its status.
If you’re not familiar with Trello, it lets you use Kanban boards to manage any type of project.
For technical writing, you can create cards for each piece of content that you’re working on. Then, you can organize those cards into different boards such as:
- Assigned
- In progress
- In editing
- Submitted
- Published
- Etc.
Overall, it’s just generally a great tool for staying on top of where you are in the content creation process for each piece of writing.
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is a useful tool for viewing or creating PDF files. It’s a must-have if you need to create technical content in PDF format, as it allows for both basic text editing and rich formatting.
You can get started with a free trial of Acrobat, but you’ll need a paid plan to create your own documents. The full-featured Acrobat Pro paid plans cost $14.99 and work on Windows and Mac.
1. Whatfix
Whatfix signifies a paradigm shift in the way help documentation is presented online. Static and lengthy web help pages do not catch the user’s attention as effectively as the interactive, pictorial guides presented by Whatfix, popularly called ‘balloons’.
Moreover, online help in today’s world needs to spread across various gadgets – be it PCs, tablets, or smartphones. Whatfix automatically adapts the help content to suit the gadget. And the same help content can be accessed in different forms – as a slideshow, PDF, or video.
Author’s Tip: Whatfix supports a unique feature – Real-time Interactive walkthrough – wherein you put your help snippets directly into the live product page. The user reads the snippet in the Whatfix balloon and performs the action accordingly on the page. This is a popular technical writing tool amongst business looking for a shift from the traditional methodologies.
Easily create interactive technical documentation with Whatfix
Discover how Whatfix’s Digital Adoption Platform can help your organization create in-app technical documentation with curated content including in-app guidance, personalized workflows, and self-help knowledge bases.Try Whatfix now!
MediaWiki
Displaying your product’s online help as wiki pages is a simple and effective idea. Your pages can be integrated into Wikipedia directly if you don’t have a separate website for your online product. Alternately, you can host Wiki-like help pages on your product website. The high familiarity of this format among online users is a key advantage, and the free wiki editing tool MediaWiki Visual Editor makes help creation quite simple.
MediaWiki is a PHP-based web editing tool, which Wikipedia uses. However, even major software corporations, Intel being a key example, use this tool to present their sales and marketing information, How To’s, and help pages on policy and procedures.
Author’s Tip: This technical writing tool comes with good support for extensions – for multi-language content, collaborative reviewing, tracking edits, built-in search, etc.
3. Adobe RoboHelp
Industry-standard authoring tool used to create help systems for desktop or web-based applications. No computer user is a stranger to RoboHelp. Every time your press F1 in any of your standard software applications, the help window that appears is almost always created using RoboHelp. However, it can also be used to churn out the conventional technical documentation for print, such as guides and training manuals.
The sophisticated RoboHelp IDE enables technical writers to develop large-scale help projects and render them on multiple hardware devices/operating systems, and in multiple formats (PDF, HTML, DOC, etc). The Older version of RoboHelp can be purchased as a low-cost edition if budget is a constraint. However, small companies can stick to simple, free alternatives such as WordPress blogs or Wikis. Good old MS Word also can generate basic HTML help files for you.
Author’s Tip: Managing large software products with regular upgrade versions can be a major challenge for technical writers as they have to be in sync with the product change history. Help files often show configurable user-defined variables that are repeated several times throughout the help documentation. (For example, a variable such as “Sleep time after inactivity” is set to 30 sec in the previous version, to be set to 1 min in the upgrade.) The RoboHelp project would take care of updating the variable value throughout the help files!
4. Notepad++
A very effective beginner’s HTML editor. Most people learn the basics of HTML programming on this technical writing tool. If your software product does not require very heavy online help documentation, for making help files of medium size, this tool is more than sufficient.
Its customizable GUI allows for easy editing, it supports WYSIWYG for printing, and also has multi-language support options.
Author’s Tip: Notepad++ comes with a rich set of plug-ins. Multi-clipboard, Code Compare, Auto-Save are some popular ones. Technical writers need to pick the right set of plug-ins, which can transform an ordinary beginner’s editor to a viable option for online help editing.
WordPress
The go-to place if you want to have a technical documentation for your product in the form of blogs. WordPress is an open-source, free, online content management platform. Blogs written on WordPress can either be accessed directly from the WordPress blog URL or can be integrated into your company website.
This article itself is hosted on the WordPress blog called Whatfix Academy. If the goal is to publish online content about your company and associated technologies regularly, then set up a WordPress blog account. Blogs can also capture user responses in the form of comments and likes, which makes it easier to engage with your target audience and sense their appreciation for your product.
Author’s Tip: Blogs in isolation may not gather sufficient eyeballs. So, write your blog first, promote your blog on social media platforms next and finally measure the viewership/responses before getting on with the next set of blogs!
Conclusion
Technical writing is essential part of any business organization. It’s also expensive to pay writers for making less than perfect finished product. Every year there are tens of thousands of new startups created, hundreds of thousands of business blogs written, and millions of pages published online. This makes it increasingly difficult to find the best technical writing tools that will help you write better blog posts and help your readers read them more effectively.