What is technical editing

I write about technical editing. Here’s what I mean when I use the term “technical editing”.

Editing online written content about software, hardware, and related technical concepts.

I don’t write about:

Traditional print publishing
Book editing
Video and image editing
Editing in other technical fields like medical, academic, and scientific editing

The act of editing

In my experience the term “edit” encompasses a variety of actions.

A technical editor will read the content and then might:

Make direct changes to the text
Suggest corrections and revisions
Add commentary
Check links and verify sources
Ask questions and seek clarification
Give praise and celebrate the author

👉 See Types of Technical Editing

Types of content

When I use the phrase “online written content”, I mean any short-form or long-form writing for the web. For example:

Shorter	Longer
Social messages	Software documentation
Product statements	Community Contributor guides
Web page content	White papers
Release notes	FAQs
READMEs	Blog posts
Newsletter introductions	Tutorials
Infographics

Working with a variety of content types requires working with a variety of tools.

👉 See my editing tech stack

The know-how

The word “technical” here refers to having an understanding of technology.

Software is eating the world, and every business is a software business. This means a large portion of content created today is written either by *developers or *for developers.

A technical editor has domain knowledge. They understand the concepts and vocabulary of the subject matter, while also having the skills to make those concepts clear and understandable to a non-technical reader.

👉 See Putting the “tech” in technical editor