Hello, World!

- KytheraOA 
print("Hello, World!")

Hey, is this thing on?

Oh! Hi there! You’ve found my online technical communication portfolio. Awesome! I’ve had it online for a while, but recently dusted it off and decided to start some old school blogging. About what, you ask? Good question!

Well, “technical writing” is the short answer. Let’s start there!

If you don’t know what technical writing is, you’re probably imagining incomprehensible line drawings and some old memes about VCR instructions being boring enough to cure insomnia. That is old school, and those are examples of technical writing…

"Confused Math Lady" meme; A composite of four images of a blonde-haired brown-eyed feminine-presenting Caucasian person. The person's expression in each image is a different state of confusion. Math equations and geometry drawings in white are superimposed over each image.
Technically, memes can be technical communication.1

The truth is, technical writing is much more than that. Even the job title, “technical writer,” can be misleading. We do so much more than writing! I often describe “technical writer” as an umbrella term, and that umbrella is made of many hats. Some technical writers wear one or two hats more often than others. Some wear all of them! And yet, every person who spends time wearing any number of those hats is a technical writer!

These are some of the different hats a technical writer might wear:

  • Writer
  • Proofreader and copy editor
  • Content manager
  • QA tester
  • User advocate
  • Graphic designer
  • Instructional designer
  • Coder (just a little, as a treat)
  • Dev whisperer
  • SME wrangler
  • Stakeholder ambassador
  • Sentient knowledge base

…Okay, the last few are humorous descriptions but they describe real things we do. The point is we do a lot of different things, and the things we do, we need to do well. That said, not all technical writers do all the things. Some of us might focus on one or two. We might excel at some but struggle with others. (Since this post is just an introduction/overview, deeper dives into each of those things are for future posts.)


Edited cartoon panel from “Hyperbole and a Half.” A cartoon girl with yellow hair and wearing a pink dress frowns while holding a broom. The caption reads “do All the things?”
All of them??2

Likewise, if you’re a technical writer looking for a new role, not every role is going to match your specialties. Don’t let that get you down! You’re still a technical writer, even if you aren’t the technical writer a given job listing is looking for. Upskill if you think you need to–learning is constant, given what we do. But don’t worry if you don’t match every job posting out there. Keep looking until you find the one that fits!

Sources and comments:

  1. OG-Dreadful. “Confused Math Lady (4080x2663px).” Reddit. September 28, 2017. https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeRestoration/comments/ejcvd3/confused_math_lady_4080x2663px/
  2. Brosh, Allie. “This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult.” Hyperbole and a Half. June 16, 2010. https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
    • Original image edited by myself to change “clean” to “do” for the purposes of this blog post.
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