5 Tips For Writing Interesting Technical Articles

I have received several emails over the past few weeks asking me for tips on how I manage writing articles on a continuous basis. As I said in one of my previous article, I write for Javalobby, Test Early and also my personal blog. So, here are a few tips for writing interesting technical articles.

Writing good technical articles is indeed a challenge, takes a lot of your personal time, requires doing a lot of research. And you should have a passion for writing and reading as well. If you don't like reading, trust me you will not be able to write either. Let's get to the 5 tips now:

1. First and foremost, you should have a fair amount of expertise on the topic you are writing. Never write an article on a topic which you are not confident. Make sure you work out all steps and give fair amount of information to your readers to know what needs to be done when things go wrong. Focus on this one topic, and make sure it is to the point.  Include lots of working samples, with clear explanations. If you really want to write and have no clue where to start with, the best place to begin writing is in your own blog.

2. Writing Style and Title. Since you are writing a technical article, make sure the language is as simple as possible. This is to make sure readers who are not native English speakers are also able to get a good grasp of your article without going back and forth to the dictionary.  Let your article be reader friendly. Having a catchy title is very important to get the attention. This doesn't mean that you can have a title to grab the attention, and the article itself doesn't even come closer to the title.

3. Write a Rough Draft. We all have learnt in our Language classes that every article should have 3 sections; introduction, body and finally the conclusion. Make sure you read it 2-3 times before you actually send it out for publishing. If you have a family member or a colleague, ask them to take a look. Always better to have a second pair of eyes, right?

4.  Comments. Make sure if your readers have any questions or difficulties that you try to respond to them as quickly as possible. Always be on top of your article. Even if the comments are not appropriate, make sure you don't go into a war of words. Try to convey your message in a polite way, and if you think you can't be polite; just don't respond.

5. Resources: Provide links to all articles you think will be useful for the reader to get additional information. This should be either at the end of the article or even better is to provide links when and where you are referring to them. If you have referred any books, list them as well. This will give a clear idea to the reader to look out for more details.

These are the few tips I use regularly to write articles and now that you know the secret, what are you waiting for? Start writing and keep us posted at Javalobby.