The Blueprint for High-Impact Technical Communication

A bold first sentence that draws you in. A steering second sentence to set you further down the path. A third sentence that tantalizes and alludes to content to follow.

Following is an initial explanatory paragraph. It serves to help back up the previous paragraphs, and start to ground it in more applicable information. Expectations are set, and potential skepticism is addressed. A link to prior art is supplied, to provide additional context.

There is then a paragraph that serves as a segue. It connects the high-level concepts and begins to draw them down the realm of the practical.

A subheading to help segment the content

This paragraph begins to answer the questions in the reader’s mind that the segue paragraph introduced. It begins with level-setting. Certain key concepts are bolded to accommodate people who skim. Following that is supplying more context, albeit still at a relatively high level.

A short sentence isolated as its own paragraph to drive attention and impact.

The following paragraph begins to dive into particulars. It introduces a new concept related to the subsection’s topic at-hand, careful to stay focused to help the reader understand the larger goal you’re driving towards.

• Bulleted lists help the reader digest these particulars,
• Break up the flow of content, and
• Step through a process.

A follow-up paragraph at the end of a subsection may allude to the author‘s opinions or larger thoughts about the topic. It also sets up the next subsection.

Another subheading

The next concept is addressed, getting more technical as the reader becomes more acclimated. A link to a peer resource is threaded in as an appeal to authority, to help reinforce confidence in the author.

An ordered list is used to:

• Communicate a series of instructions the reader should take,
• In which order they should be followed, and
• Do so in a way that both makes it easy to follow and also breaks up reading flow to be more noticeable.

There might then be another follow-up paragraph. This one might contain a sentence with an em dash—indicative of a trailing thought that is still topically related.

A deeper subheading

This section works deeper into the technical topic. It dispenses with reasoning and analogies and discusses practical specifics.

A piece of code that translates the practical specifics into language a computer can be instructed with. Comments are supplied to help facilitate understanding.

• A bulleted list is used,
• It breaks down and explains code concepts that may not be self-evident, and
• These points may be more holistic, meaning they aren’t a good fit for inline code comments.

A new concept is introduced

We break out of the depth of the deeper subheading’s content and return to a level higher. This is a new concept, yet still living under the umbrella of the overall topic at-hand.

The format of this new concept mirrors the structure of the previous section. This predictability helps with reading flow and answering the reader’s unspoken expectations.

A subheading that begins to tie all the previous sections’ content together

This subsection takes each of the previous points raised and reinforces their need to be sequentially discussed. It then explicitly confirms the case the rest of the content has been implicitly building, that this topic was worth breaking down to better appreciate as a holistic whole.

Some established trust is cashed in. The author is allowed some space to wax philosophical about larger implications, or discuss their feelings on the matter.

A conclusion

The bold first sentence is revisited now that the reader has completed learning about the concept being discussed. A subsequent sentence explicitly ties the nuance the rest of the content discusses to the overall point.

The reader is thanked, and the content ends.