Technical Writing

Technical writing is the practice of documenting processes, such as software manuals or instructional materials. Traditionally, it was limited to user manuals of some sort. 

What Is a Technical Word? Have you ever noticed that reading a story can be a lot different than reading a science or a math textbook? Most of the time, informational texts are difficult to read because they use a lot of technical words. These words have specific meanings in each area of study. For example, think about what the word 'area' means each of these sentences:

There were no wild horses in the area.

The area of the square was 9 cm.

In the first sentence, 'area' just means the location you are in - there are wild horses near where you are. In the second sentence, 'area' is a technical word: it has a specific meaning when it's used in mathematics. In mathematics, 'area' means 'the size of a surface.'