This page is still under construction.

In the meantime, you can still peruse what is currently available while additional content is slowly populated here.

Quora answers

You can visit the answers section of my Quora profile, many of which became articles on LinkedIn.

Technical Writing

writing Technical writing is a specialized form of communication used by industrial and scientific organizations to clearly and accurately convey complex information to customers, employees, assembly workers, engineers, scientists and other users who may reference this form of content to complete a task or research a subject. Technical writing is a labor-intensive form of writing that demands accurate research of a subject and the conversion of collected information into a written format, style, and reading level the end-user will easily understand or connect with.

Op-Ed

An op-ed (short for "opposite the editorial page"), a type of opinion journalism, is written prose that expresses a strong, focused opinion on an issue of relevance to the target audience and is commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. Op-eds offer independent voices a foundation to influence public discourse, and are written to persuade, inform, or incite public debate, with rhetoric playing a vital role in achieving these goals. Online publications and blogs have become popular, and social media plays a significant role in disseminating and engaging with op-ed content. While they have always had a significant impact on public opinion, the digital age has allowed op-eds to influence the public more broadly and almost instantaneously.

Procedural

By far, the most common form of technical writing is procedural technical writing. Procedures are simply instructions broken down into easily understood, individual steps. To be effective, the expert and "layman" reader must be equally capable of understanding the same procedures. This is why accuracy, standardization, and simplicity are so critical in producing this form of writing.

Scientific

The second most common form of technical writing is often referred to as scientific technical writing. This form of technical writing follows "white paper" writing standards and is used to market a specialized product/service or opinion/discovery to select readers. Organizations normally use scientific technical writing to publish white papers as industry journal articles or academic papers. Scientific technical writing is written to appeal to readers familiar with a technical topic. Unlike procedural technical writing, these documents often include unique industry terms, data, and a clear bias supporting the author or the authoring organization's findings/position. This secondary form of technical writing must show a deep knowledge of a subject and the field of work with the sole purpose of persuading readers to agree with a paper's conclusion. Technical writers generally author, or ghost write white papers for an organization or industry expert, but are rarely credited in the published version.

Historical

While technical writing has only been recognized as a profession since World War II, its roots can be traced to ancient Egypt, where visual communication was regularly used to explain procedures. In ancient Greek and Roman times, technical writing by the works of writers like Aristotle and Democratus are cited as some of the earliest forms of written technical writing. The earliest examples of what would be considered modern procedural technical writing date back to the early alchemists.

Op-ed Rhetoric

Op-eds are written to persuade, inform, or incite public debate, with rhetoric playing a vital role in achieving these goals. Contributors often establish their credentials early to build credibility, which is an appeal to ethos. An emotional appeal, or pathos, is another common tactic where authors evoke sympathy, anger, or hope in order to drive people to action. Logical appeals, or logos, are achieved through well-reasoned arguments and evidence by using statistics, historical examples, and real-world scenarios structured in a way to connect with readers and make their case compelling and hard to ignore.

Credit
Definitions and terms used here were obtained from Wikipedia and employed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike License 4.0. Aside from the Terminology section, all of the articles, technical writing, and op-ed content on this page is comprised of original work created by Shane Lilly. No artificial intelligence was used in the creation of this content.