The focus for this chapter is one of the most important of all uses of technical writing—instructions. As you know, instructions are those step-by-step explanations of how to do something: how to build, operate, repair, or maintain things.

Writing Instructions 

One of the most common and one of the most important uses of technical writing is instructions—those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. But for something seemingly so easy and intuitive, instructions are some of the worst-written documents you can find. Like me, you've probably had many infuriating experiences with badly written instructions. What follows in this chapter may not be a fool-proof, goof-proof guide to writing instructions, but it will show you what professionals consider the best techniques.

Ultimately, good instruction writing requires:

• Clear, concise writing
• A thorough understanding of the procedure in all its technical detail
• Your ability to put yourself in the place of the reader, the person trying to use your instructions
• Your ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and to capture that awareness on paper
• Finally, your willingness to go that extra distance and test your instructions on the kind of person you wrote them for.

By now, you've probably studied headings, lists, and special notices—writing a set of instructions with these tools probably seems obvious. Just break the discussion out into numbered vertical lists and throw in some special notices at the obvious points and you're done! Well, not quite, but that's a great start. This chapter explores some of the features of instructions that can make them more complex. You can in turn use these considerations to plan your own instructions.