Lesson 1: What is Technical Writing?
The importance of editing and review
You might think the process of technical writing is complete once you put the last word on the page, but it isn't. Every document needs to be reviewed and edited. In some cases you'll be fortunate enough to have an actual editor in place to edit your document, but most technical writers must rely on another technical writer or even do it themselves. In addition to the normal editing tasks of checking grammar, general word usage, and spelling, technical editing includes several other elements including checks for consistent word usage, checks that a consistent audience is maintained, and checks that the organizational choices make sense.
Reviewing often occurs at the same time as the editing process but it serves a very different purpose. While editing ensures a clean grammatically correct document with consistent style, it doesn't test the accuracy of the content in any way. Reviewing does. If possible, you should have at least one of the developers who wrote the product participate in a review as well as at least one person who fits the target audience profile. If the person within the target audience doesn't understand everything you wrote then even if it's accurate you haven't successfully met your mandate and need to re-write the document accordingly. If the developer finds inaccuracies or points out areas where the product was changed then similarly you need to fix those before declaring the document finished.
