by: Christine Taylor

Writing technical articles is a challenge. There you sit, surrounded
by reams of research, notes and interviews. Where do you start?
Remember 5th grade English? You start with an outline.
Outlining has fallen on hard times lately. Mind mapping and
brainstorming are much more fashionable. These techniques are great
when generating ideas, but once you’ve got your ideas germinating
you’ve got to outline them. Without an outline, your article will:
Be an unstructured mess.

Take three times as long to write.
Don’t let this happen to you – outline. If it’s been a while since
5th grade – or if your “progressive” school didn’t stoop to teach
you actual English skills – let me remind you why it’s important and
how to do it.

Outlining keeps you from writing an unstructured mess. Readers,
especially American readers, prefer distinct sections in their
media. For example, look at American screenplays. Movies
invariably have three acts, and anything that doesn’t have them is
considered an art film. Effective speeches often contain three
parts, and readers like three points because the structure makes
easier to retain information.

Outlining shrinks your writing time by a third to a half. How do
you whittle down that pile of research notes and interviews into
an article or white paper? You guess it – outline it. By assigning
sections to your notes before you start writing, you’ll
categorize, simplify and clarify. Not bad before you’ve even
written an introduction. For example, let’s say you’re writing an
article about mirroring. You can divide such an article into
several different sections depending on what your client wants to
get across. Here are some examples of different outlines:

1) Explanation of mirroring 2) Differences between local and
remote mirroring, 3) Contrasting mirroring with other forms of
replication, or

1) Define mirroring 2) List environments that require mirroring

3) Decision matrix for assigning different mirroring levels.
Once you’ve done your research it’s simple to assign pieces to
different sections. Believe me, it’ll light a fire under your
writing time.

Christine Taylor is president of Keyword Copywriting, which helps
marketing and PR pros leverage their relationships with technology
clients. E-mail her at chris@keywordcopy.com, call her at
760-249-6071, or check out Keyword’s Website at www.keywordcopy.com


About The Author

Christine writes technical marketing communications for data
storage, networking and pharmaceutical clients, including:
EMC
Commvault
Quantum
StoneFly Networks
Sybase
Maranti Networks
ClariStor
Fujitsu
AES
Obagi Medical Products
She specializes in trade journal articles, white papers, press
kits and online content. She serves as a contributing editor
to Computer Technology Review and acts as editor-in-chief for
Storage Inc. and Storage Management Solutions.
Before moving into technical journalism and marketing she
served 20 years in the IT trenches, including systems
administration at Avery Dennison's Research and Development
division.
chris@keywordcopy.com