Lesson 4: Writing Procedures
Most technical writers spend at least part of their time writing procedures. Procedures are essentially detailed instructions for performing one or more tasks. Unless your documentation is strictly conceptual (explaining a topic rather than telling your readers how to use the software), you will need to write procedures. Since readers will be following your instructions on real applications with real data, it is particularly important that your directions be clear, concise, accurate, and easy to follow.
Use active language
A procedure tells your reader to perform a specific action or set of actions. Good instructions use active language, commanding the reader to act rather than discussing actions that have been taken or could be taken by others. There's a big difference between saying "the dropdown box in the corner of the page can be used to select the date" and "select a date using the dropdown box in the corner". The first informs your reader what that particular dropdown box does and the second tells them to do it. The text introducing a procedure can discuss when to perform the procedure; the procedure itself needs to tell the user how to do the needed actions and assume that they are, in fact, doing them.
