Generation Is Cheap Now, Judgement Isn’t
There’s a line I keep coming back to when people ask whether AI is a threat to technical writing. Producing text has become cheap. Deciding whether that text is right, whether it’s needed at all, whether it’s in the right place, has not. Those were always different skills. They just used to arrive bundled together, […]
Your Knowledge Base Isn’t Broken, Though Most of It Should Be Deleted
Nobody’s knowledge base has too little content. Every one I’ve inherited has too much, usually by a factor of about 3. Hundreds of articles, several versions of the same procedure, material describing a system that was decommissioned in 2021. The complaint is always that people don’t use it. The diagnosis is usually that it needs […]
Anyone Can Learn Confluence, Getting the Content Out of People Is the Real Job
You can teach someone the mechanics of a knowledge base in an afternoon. Spaces, page templates, permissions, a sensible folder structure. Within a few weeks, a capable person can build something that looks organised, professional, ready to fill. That’s the easy 20%. The other 80% is getting the actual content out of engineers, SMEs, business […]
The Time AI Gives Back to a Technical Writer
Every technical writing job has a set of tasks that sit between you, the actual writing. Building an outline. Working out what’s missing from a documentation set. Putting together an example so a concept lands. Editing the same document for the fifth time. None of that is the hard part of the job, though collectively […]
What AI Actually Changed About Technical Writing
The prediction was that AI would make technical writers unnecessary. A few years in, that hasn’t happened. What has happened is that the slow parts of the job got considerably faster. Research, note taking, first drafts, restructuring, and reformatting. All of that used to take hours. Now it takes minutes, which is a real change […]
🧠Why Content Design Skills Are Essential for Technical Writers
In 2025, writing clearly isn’t enough. Technical writers are expected to do more than just explain how things work. They’re expected to create content that helps users solve problems fast, across multiple channels, devices, and use cases. This is where content design comes in. Content design isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a critical skillset that makes […]