Introduction to Help Authoring

In computer science, help authoring stands for writing technical documentation such as an application help file, online manual for a web service, or a printed manual for a device. However, for a technical writer who works on documentation, help authoring involves many different processes such as:

• Analysis of the subject being documented;
• Writing help file content;
• Creation of illustrations such as images, screenshots, schemes, diagrams, etc.;
• Creation of videos (for example, screencasts);
• Help file quality control (including editing and proofreading of written text, working on the document structure, working on the common style and appearance, etc.);
• Integration of the help file with an application, website and providing context-sensitive help, etc. (see our instructions for .NET, Delphi, and VBA);
• Localization of a help file (e.g., translation of an existing help file to another language).

Thus, it is obvious that a technical writer should have certain writing and instrumental skills including the ability to work with specialized software tools such as help authoring tools, image editing tools, screen capture, and screen recording software.