What is Freelance Technical Writing?

Technical writing requires the ability to write clearly, plainly, and accurately about extremely complicated material. If you can do that-and quickly-then becoming a successful technical writer is well within your grasp.

The most common clients for freelance technical writers are educational firms, training companies and manufacturing/electronics/software companies. All of these demand a high volume of documentation-style writing, and thus a high volume of technical writers to produce that writing. However, the nature of technical writing indicates there aren't many opportunities outside these industries. Tech writing is only warranted when there's something sufficiently complex to explain in a standardized way, and a mom n' pop software company may not have the money or the need to hire even an entry-level tech writer. So if you want to freelance as a tech writer, you'll almost certainly wind up working on contract for one of the bigger companies.

As with copy editing and journalism, a high degree of familiarity with as many style guides as possible is mandatory for any good freelance technical writer. Technical reports are frequently only a small part of a company's wider technical literature. Writing all of a company's documentation in the same style is a good way to ensure consistent quality and readability over a long company lifespan. The most commonly used style guides are AP (Associated Press), MLA (Modern Language Association), and Chicago. Strunck and White, although older, is still a classic, and commonly in use with certain firms. Pick up a copy of each and familiarize yourself with them. Knowing the popular style guides will improve your technical writing and you'll become more marketable to a wide variety of clients as well.