Creative Writing vs. Technical Writing

With content being the most important aspect of SEO, it would be good for you to hone your writing skills. Whether you write for your own website or you write for others, it would benefit you to have both creative and technical writing skills. Depending on your audience and on your topic, you may need to shift between the two writing styles every now then.

However, it can be quite difficult for technical writers to write creatively and vice versa. Well, here are some tips to help you easily make that shift:

Language

Creative writing: It’s okay to use idioms, slang, or colloquial as long as you know that your audience would understand them. This would set an informal tone to your content and make it more fun to read. Try to refrain from using jargons as these might bore and confuse your reader who might be reading your piece for entertainment purposes.

Technical writing: It’s okay to use jargons as long as you know that your audience would be familiar with them. However, it would still be best to use simpler terms whenever possible as that would promote readability. Refrain from using idioms, slang, or colloquial as these might cause ambiguity with regards to the meaning of your content. When writing technically, it’s important to ensure that your content is clear and precise and is not subject to interpretation.

Imagination vs. Facts

Creative writing: You can use your imagination more when writing creatively. This will allow you to appeal to your reader’s emotions, which is important, especially if you’re trying to pitch a sale. You can make use of various figures of speech and various formats –prose, poetry, and others – to get your message across. It’s also okay for you to leave your reader with something to ponder on.

Technical writing: When writing technically, it’s important to stick to the facts and to write in a straightforward manner. Although it’s okay to use metaphors and analogies when explaining a technical concept, try not to let your metaphors and analogies stray too far from the real thing. For example, when writing creatively, you can compare a very challenging situation to a mountain that you must climb. However, it’s not quite appropriate to compare a complicated Java code to a mountain that you must climb, although if you really must, you can probably compare it to a puzzle that you have to solve.

Still, though, it would be best to stick to the facts and to write them as simply as possible in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion. As much as possible, your reader shouldn’t have to ponder too much about your content’s meaning after reading it.

Brevity

Creative writing: When writing creatively, it’s okay to beat around the bush so-to-speak. For example, you can explicitly describe the setting for your content or explicitly illustrate the need for the topic you’re writing about before you discuss the main points of your topic. As long as it would entertain or amuse your readers, keeping your content descriptive and illustrative would allow you to effectively engage your reader in what you have to say.

Technical writing: When writing technically, remember that less is more. Keep your content as brief and to the point as possible. While readers who read creative pieces do so to be entertained, readers of technical information do so to be informed, either because they need the information to solve a technical problem or because they need the information for some academic or scholarly purpose. As such, they expect to get the information they need easily and quickly and would get impatient if they would need to wade through a lot of superfluous content.

Quick reminders: Whether you need to write creatively or technically, make sure that you don’t compromise your content’s readability. Aside from using subsections and white space, also try to use the active voice and the first or second persons whenever possible. If you need expert help from writers, you can always try https://www.customwritings.com/ – a professional academic writing company.