Creating a Technical Style
While postmodernists, particularly social constructivists, debate the political
agendas of a clear objective style, nearly everyone agrees that an effective
technical style focuses primarily on the demands of an audience and its
reasons for reading a technical document. Others argue that "good technical
writing" is simply "good writing." To help you think about stylistic issues as
you write, consider the following concepts:
Arrangement
 Chunk and sequence information
 Use visuals to clarify your information
 Be selectively repetitious because few people read technical documents
from beginning to end
Style
 Create a style sheet to achieve consistency among writers in your group
and among different parts of your document
 Use frequent headings and subheadings
Grammar & Usage
 Put strong agents in the subject slots of clauses
 Use the active rather than the passive voice unless you have a good
reason not to
 Use articles before nouns
 Use strong verbs rather than verb - infinitive phrases
 Use strong verbs rather than nominalizations
 Eliminate unnecessary words and phrases
 Choose concrete, specific words
 Select plain rather than fancy words