Comment by Amarachi Johnson on "The Technical Writers Guide to Contributing to Open Source Projects"

CommentThe Technical Writers Guide to Contributing to Open Source Projects

Amarachi Johnson

💙

Oct 28, 2020

I do have some questions:

What skills should someone possess to become a technical writer, efficiently contribute to Open Source or even land a job as a tech writer?
Is it possible to contribute to the developer docs of a project when you can't code in the languages the software was written. (Most times dev docs have quite an amount of coding explanations and examples)

Edidiong Asikpo (Didi)

Senior Developer Advocate at Ambassador Labs

Oct 29, 2020

#1. To become a technical writer, you need to have the following skills: Technical skill, Audience perception, writing skill, ability to carry out research, and a unique voice. I explained all these points in the article below.

edidiongasikpo.com/technical-writing-what-and-how

#2. Yes, it is absolutely possible. You can start from rearranging the structure of the developer documentation to make it more user friendly or correcting typos to eventually understanding more about the language used to build the product. Also, you can reach out to the engineers in the team to help you explain some important concepts as well.

Thanks so much Edidiong Asikpo

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