The goal of technical writing is to simplify complicated information, making it understandable and clear for readers. With technical writing, it must be impersonal, and the language used by a writer must efficiently convey correct information to the correct audience.
Copywriting can fall under both technical writing and creative writing, but it usually corresponds to the latter. The aim of copywriting is to persuade readers, and this is a creative endeavor. However, persuasion is often enhanced by including technical information regarding the subject being advertised.
If a technical writer wants to write spec sheets for products, his or her knowledge needs to be strong enough that they translate complicated sentences into something everyone can understand. While technical writers do not have to be engineers, they need to have a deep understanding of the product’s technology. Since technical writing requires broad knowledge in a particular area, tech writers often will have advanced degrees in the particular field they are writing about.
Talents of Great Technical Writers
A technical writer will also have greater knowledge about a particular topic in order to produce content for training, user guides, manuals, and product specifications. Being able to give a clear message or instructions to a specific audience is more important now than it has ever been, which is why technical writers will also be working in the fields of radio, telecom, healthcare, transportation, publishing, and many others.
A great technical writer will be able to explain the context, outcomes, and the steps to follow of the product, programme, or software that he is writing about. We will discuss more of the types of products technical writers are involved with, as well as talk about the kinds of skills successful technical writing requires.
You will also find copywriters creating informational content, which is largely technical writing. While some copywriters specialise in one specific area, many usually write about different industries, ranging from food to tech. Technical communicators and copywriters are not aligned with the same goals, though they do have places where they overlap.
What Differentiates Copywriters
What makes copywriters different is that they have a strong sense of the marketing goal while writing. While copywriters engage users emotionally with their written words, this does not mean that they have no technical responsibilities.
Copywriters work across a variety of media, including brochures, advertising, videos, scripts, etc. Using an advanced writing tool is fairly uncommon for copywriters, as typically they are focused on one piece of content and are not required to think about reuse and writing things at scale. More copywriters nowadays are getting pretty technical, since they are also producing copy for product descriptions, company ID profiles, art magazines, annual reports, corporate newsletters, and so on. The lines are blurred when the work of the copywriter involves descriptive writing.
For highly technical products, a technical copywriter is probably the best choice, since they will be used to dealing with complicated technologies. If your marketing materials involve technical information, then a technical copywriter is a better fit for helping. Also, you will certainly want both a copywriter and a content writer, or one copywriter that can handle both copywriting and content writing.
Technical and Creative Copywriting Are Different Niches
You want to find the best person for your work, and there is a huge difference between what a technical copywriter can do for your company and what kind of services a creative copywriter can provide. Very often, when a tech company is looking for a technical copywriter, they are really looking to find someone that can help them market their tech products and services. Like a technical copywriter, an IT copywriter writes compelling copy about technical products and services, but these products and services are in the field of computer science.
That is, if readers need to have a solid grasp on the product or service before buying, the technical copywriter can very well venture into the territory of technical writing. Even if your content is impossibly niche, you can still find a technical copywriter who will write it. What type of writer you will need for your project will largely depend on your goals and who your target readers are.
If a freelance tech copywriter has great marketing, writing, and interpersonal skills, but does not understand the scope of your project, he or she might eventually ask you to abandon your project because of its technicality. For writers looking to produce technical documents, understanding everything there is to know about a topic is a must, basically being an expert in your field.
Technical Writing vs. Business Writing
There are some important differences between technical writing and business writing, and these differences are what we are going to focus on in this article. While it is true that there is a fair amount of overlap with technical and business writing, such as the need for revision, there are also some key differences that distinguish the two styles.
These writing styles overlap fairly frequently, and a lot of writers will produce pieces that fall into those styles. These two career paths might appear to be fairly similar at first glance, but technical writing and content writing are built upon two completely different concepts, even though their working processes overlap.
In addition to writing technical how-to guides, a team’s marketing is also responsible for effective technical communications within the business. A technical writer is someone who is all about facts and data, and they usually specialize or specialize in specific industries in which they possess in-depth knowledge necessary to write required technical documentation; such as medicine, manufacturing, or software development.
Technical writers typically write online reference materials, printed manuals, function specifications, procedures, and complete technical reference guides. Technical copywriters work on projects from website content and articles to case studies, pamphlets, and user guides.
As you can see, there are a lot of differences between a copywriter, content writer, novelist, technical writer, blogger, content creator, UX writer, copy editor, content strategist, and more. If you are a newbie in the field of technical writing and looking to make your mark, you are going to want to check out a Technical Writing Certification course, where you will learn the basics of being a technical writer, how to dominate interviews for technical writers, and how to distinguish yourself as a technical writing candidate.