I'm a technical writer and a UX writer. This list gathers my favourite books which are of a technical nature. For more context and lists of other types of resources to aid writing, check out my blog post about the subject; the post contain book notes for most of these books in full: pivic.blog/blog/technical-writing/
Technical/UX writing Public
Created and curated by Niklas
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Niklas says: Today, people search for answers in neat tidbits that help them to quickly understand and learn what they are looking for; people do not want to read aeons of different documents and be forced to manually piece them together to figure something out...
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Microsoft Manual of Style by Microsoft Corporation
3 stars
Maximize the impact and precision of your message! Now in its fourth edition, the Microsoft Manual of Style provides essential …
Niklas says: Use the web version: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/
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Niklas says: The Yahoo! Style Guide used to be available online, but that is no longer the case. The printed copy is still in print. Even though it is a bit dated, I recommend buying a copy as it contains tips on style, grammar, formatting, writing for the web, and a million other little things.
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Niklas says: Annotation is a note added by way of comment or explanation. Modern tools like Hypothesis and Readwise allow us to annotate web pages and books and collect our annotations in a neat way. When writing technical documentation, annotation does matter. Personally, I use Hypothesis...
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The Chicago Manual of Style by University of Chicago Press
Much has happened in the years since the publication of the seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. The …
Niklas says: I often see the two main branches of professional–writing styles: Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style. I dig Chicago, even though findability, to me, isn't fun with the printed version.
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Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Technical Writing by Jared Bhatti, Zachary Sarah Corleissen, Jen Lambourne, and 1 other
3 stars
Niklas says: It’s mainly for developers. It’s fairly modern and contains a few very good tips for modern technical writers, especially those who adhere to writing docs-as-code.
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Niklas says: Merriam-Webster's is my preferred standard dictionary for American English (even though others, for example, American Heritage Dictionary, are perfectly fine and, at times, even better, depending on your use cases). Microsoft defer to Merriam-Webster.
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The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
4 stars
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner …
Niklas says: Most user-experience designers who have read this book love it. I believe it can make technical writers open their eyes a bit more to how the visual world presents possibilities instead of problems; technical writers are often prone to shy away from visuals (images, videos, flowcharts)...
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Niklas says: The best thing about this book is that it shows the value of establishing a content strategy to avoid the Hell where outdated, fragmented, unclear, and unknown documentation lives.
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Developing quality technical information by Gretchen Hargis, Michelle Carey, Ann Kilty Hernandez, and 4 others (IBM Press series--information management)
4 stars
