By its very nature, technical writing is structured and concise. To ensure that technical manuals are consistent, many projects are required to comply with existing specifications. For example, the military has a number of specifications that define the content and format of their manuals. In addition there are many industry-specific specifications.

The primary military specification for technical manuals is MIL-STD-38784. This document describes in detail every aspect of a technical manual, including formatting, layout, content, and many other practices. There are illustrations in the appendix to show you exactly how, for example, a U.S Army technical manual should appear. But even with this level of detail, it has been my experience that every acquiring command will have different ideas on how they want their manual to look.

ATA 100 is the corresponding specification for the Air Transport Association. This specification has individual chapters describing how to document, for example the electrical system, the communication system, or the auxiliary power system.

To comply with these specifications, you must also make sure your artwork is correctly created. Military manuals must have line art illustrations; photos are prohibited. Other specifications have similar restrictions.

Writing software documentation presents different challenges. The old Digital Equipment Corporation produced an excellent guide for software technical writing called the Digital Style Guide. Another excellent book for software technical writers is the Microsoft Manual of Style. This guide does a great job of describing the elements of a software user interface. It will tell you how to refer to radio buttons, checkboxes, and spinner controls in your program.

When you are working in certain industries or with smaller customers, there may not be any clear specification to follow. I would recommend that you examine the publications of other companies in the same line of business (suppliers and vendors) to see what their technical manuals look like. Or you can adapt one of the aforementioned specifications to the task, even though they may be overkill for smaller projects.

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