This cheat sheet offers guidelines for IT professionals seeking to improve technical writing skills. To print it, use the one-page PDF version; you can also customize the Word version of the document.

General Recommendations

• Determine your writing objectives.
• Understand what your readers want to see in your text and how they want to see it.
• Keep your message or document as short and simple as possible to achieve the goals of both parties.
• Use terminology and tone appropriate for the audience.
• Craft your text with the understanding that some readers will merely skim it.
• Enable spelling and grammar-checking tools.
• Don't plagiarize. Err on the side of caution. When in doubt, attribute anyway.
• Carefully read your text before finalizing it.
• Seek others' feedback on the structure, look, words, and content of your writing.
• Improve your writing skills through deliberate efforts.
• Recognize that these tips are just guidelines. There are always exceptions.

Advice for Writing Sentences

• Delete words whose absence doesn't significantly deter from the meaning of the sentence.
• Keep your sentences short.
• Be consistent regarding the Oxford comma.
• Avoid passive voice, which often leads to ambiguity and confusion.
• When feeling the need to use a semicolon, parenthesis or an em dash, consider breaking the thought into separate sentences.
• Maintain structural and stylistic parallelism across your headings and list elements.
• Know the difference between such as and like and use them accordingly.

Advice for Writing Paragraphs

• Place your most important point in the beginning of the paragraph.
• Split long paragraphs into several short ones for easier reading and skimming.
• Avoid one-sentence paragraphs unless you want to place spotlight on the paragraph.
• Delete paragraphs that don't significantly contribute to the flow or meaning of your text.
• Make sure the sentences in the paragraph support the paragraph's objective.

Tips for Email Messages

• Try to keep your message shorter than 3 paragraphs.
• Lead with the strongest statement to grab attention.
• Assume the recipient will read only the first 2 sentences.
• Use the Subject line to get your main point across.
• Keep the message personally-relevant to the reader.
• Don't respond in the heat of the moment. Take time to reflect.
• Be specific about what action you'd like the reader to take or which conclusion the reader should reach.
• Consider whether email is the best medium for your message.

Tips for Longer Reports

• Use a consistent, generally-accepted style for capitalizing words in a title.
• Pick a title that'll catch the reader's attention while also setting their expectations.
• Create a strong executive summary that stands on its own even if the reader ignores the rest of the report.
• Split the report into multiple sections to logically group and separate contents.
• Strive for a simple structure, avoiding deep nesting of headings and lists.
• Include at least one paragraph between two headings for an introduction or transition.
• Use the word processor's style management features for consistent formatting of headings and other text.
• Craft captions that guide readers to the conclusions you want them to reach about the chart or figure.
• Place lengthy technical excerpts such as large code fragments into an appendix.
• Refer to every figure and appendix section from your main text.
• Make sure the headers and footers include the right notices (copyright, confidential, page number, etc.).

Formatting Guidelines

• Err on the side of simplicity when selecting a visual style for your document or message.
• Use italics or boldface, not both, when emphasizing.
• Know the difference between em dashes and hyphens, and use them accordingly.
• Avoid breaking short lists or paragraphs across pages.
• Insert a single space, not 2, between sentences.
• Keep font size and typeface consistent throughout your report.
• Avoid unnecessary capitalization.
• Crop and size screenshots to ensure readability.

Tips for Text Chats

• Skip the period at the end of your message if you want.
• Use emoticons to add non-verbal clues that might exist in a verbal chat.
• Avoid emoticons and abbreviations that the recipient might not understand.
• Watch out for the errors introduced by autocorrect.

Post-Scriptum

Authored by Lenny Zeltser, who's been writing as an information technology and security consultant, product manager, author and instructor for many years. Lenny also created a short writing course for cybersecurity professionals.

This cheat sheet, version 1.1, is released under the Creative Commons v3 "Attribution" License.