For more than twenty-five years I specialized in writing user guides and manuals related to the software industry. I am the co-author of three books on Act! contact management software (WordWare Publishing 1997, 1999, 2000) and the author of Learn Peachtree Accounting (WordWare Publishing (2002). In addition, I have written dozens of guides, manuals, and workbooks for large and small companies. So, I know something about the subject.
If you need to write a user manual or training document for your company, here are some easy-to-follow steps for creating it.
- Know your subject thoroughly. Don’t rely on others to give you the information. Get your hands dirty and test the program.
- Graphics are very important. I use Snagit by TechSmith. The program you use must have editing capabilities so that you can point to things, circle them, or remove white space to make the graphic more compact.
- Organize your manual before you start writing it. Even a short document needs to be arranged correctly. Doing this beforehand keeps you from having an “I forgot to explain that first before I wrote this” moment.
- Use an easily understood voice when writing. You are not writing your thesis for review by professors. Usually, you are writing for those struggling to learn from what you write, don’t make it harder for them.
- Standardize your headings and subheadings. If your document is more than 25 pages, consider breaking it up into a couple of chapters. This is a requirement for anything over fifty pages long.
- For fonts, I suggest you use a sans serif font (Arial, Calibri, Tahoma, etc.) for headings and a serif font (Courier, Times New Roman, Cambria, etc.) for text. Studies have shown that those types of fonts are easiest to read. Also standardize the style of the font used to describe buttons, menu items, and text typed by the user.
- Break processes into steps. a) Do this. b) See this. c) Select this. Use graphics to show the user what they are doing. You can never have too many graphics.
- Write “you will see” not “the user will see”. Address your audience as if you are sitting next to them and guiding them.
- Add a Table of Contents to any document longer than a few pages. It helps as a guide if your reader needs to look up something in particular. Add an Index for longer documents. I’ve had to do these by hand, and it is a pain, but much appreciated. Now, there are programs that help you do this task.
- Don’t be afraid of injecting your personality into your writing. Readers will appreciate a little humor or an anecdote about your experience. In the books I co-authored with Neal Berkowitz, we sometimes had differing opinions on how to use Act! contact management. Our back-and-forth made it into the book and people responded well to our personalities.
Hopefully these tips and instructions will help you when writing user manuals and training guides. If you have any questions, be sure to contact me.
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