Hi, there!👋🏾

Welcome to my new series where I explore anything technical writing and write about what I learned and practised in the field. Today’s just going to be an introduction to the materials I’ve picked up and still going to pick up. I think of you all as my accountability partners and I do hope you also learn a thing or two from my research and practice too!

I’ll list some research materials quickly so we can get started. Shoutout to Blessing Anyebe, my good friend who I totally didn’t steal some of the resources on this list from. 😏

Helpful Technical Writing Resources

1. Documenting APIs - Tom Johnson

   

   If I tell you this is a goldmine for documenting APIs, I’d be undermining this resource, and rightfully so. It is more than a goldmine; it’s Neptune’s whole treasure trove!

   I was so glad I stumbled upon this guide. Who knew this guide existed? Gosh! This guide is teaching me more about documenting APIs, the dos and don’ts with clear examples and exercises to prove that I know what I’m doing.

   It’s interesting because I’m learning more about parameters, endpoints, data types, authentication, curl, JSON, and the command line, especially testing the APIs!

   I’m currently in chapter 2 and it’s amazing how much work went into making that course and all for the price of free if you’re reading on his blog.

   It’s super convenient in my opinion, similar to how you can click the follow and the like buttons of my blog page (shameless blog engagement plug). We will focus on this one first because I’m interested in putting high-quality API documentation work out there. One I’m sure will not frustrate developers and writers, but one that they would enjoy. :)

2. Docs for Developers - Jared Bhatti, Sarah Corleissen, Jen Lambourne, David Nuñez, Heidi Waterhouse

   

   Another book I’ve seen recommended by Tom Johnson, and many others for technical writing is Docs for Developers. I’ll begin reading this next week and provide feedback on my journey so far.

3. Product is Docs, Second Edition - The Splunk team

   

   Another great recommendation I’ve seen lately is Splunk Team’s “The Product is Docs” book. I won’t write a review just yet till I read through everything. Hopefully, that won’t be long from today.

How this Series will Work

I will update these lists from time to time and I’ll make sure to keep you guys updated on the changes via the blog, X, LinkedIn or GitHub. I want to post as often as I can and make sure we’re all learning together.

This will extend way beyond APIs and fall into the larger scope of technical writing as technical writing is more than just writing good API documentation.

Do you have any additional resources or technical writing talks that may be helpful? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for your time and I hope you join me all the way till the end!