💡 Various templates & tips on writing high-quality documentation that people want to read.
- Why must you document your project
- Best Practices
- Templates
- The Art of Technical Writing
- Technical Writer Programs
- Awesome Technical Writing Sources
- Get Feedback
- Acknowledgements
- It doesn’t matter how good your software is, because if the documentation is not good enough, people will not use it. Even if for some reason they have to use it because they have no choice, without good documentation, they won’t use it effectively or the way you’d like them to
- THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE GLANCE AND LEAVE. Make it pretty so that it's easier for them to star before they leave. The more stars you have, the likelier it is that serious developers will use your repo
- You will be using your code in 6 months. Code that you wrote 6 months ago is often indistinguishable from code that someone else has written
- You want people to use your code because you think that others might find it useful. However, people need to understand why your code might be useful for them, before they decide to use it
- You want people to help out. If you don’t have documentation, you will miss out on a whole class of contributors
- You want to be a better writer
✔️ Things to remember:
- Keep a lighthearted friendly tone. Treat the reader as someone who doesn't have a lot of knowledge about the topic but is very interested
- Keep things brief
- Use headings frequently. This breaks things up when reading and often it is good for linking to specific information
- Link to other places in the documentation often but only for additional information. Readers should not have to navigate through several pages to find the information that they need about one specific thing. Just inline the immediately relevant information and link off if they want to know more
- Use as many code snippets, CLI, etc. examples as possible. Show the reader what you mean
- Gently introduce a guide before diving into technical details. This gives context and readers are more likely to stay engaged longer
- It is always good to describe the functionality of the various files in your project
- Always use gender-neutral pronouns. A gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun which does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed. For eg. - using 'they' instead of 'he / she'
❌ Things you should avoid:
- Don't assume prior knowledge about the topic. If you want to appeal to a large audience, then you are going to have people with very diverse backgrounds
- Don't use idioms. Write using more formal terms that are well defined. This makes it easier for non-native English speakers and for translations to be written
- Don't clutter explanations with overly detailed examples
- Don't use terms that are offensive to any group. There will never be a good reason to
📦 CGX CLI - a template generator:
CGX - Generate all the recommended documentation / files (pre-filled) for the GitHub and GitLab community standards. (Issue templates, code of conduct, etc.)
- r/technicalwriting
- My Tech Writing Process - Amruta Ranade
- Developer to Technical Writer - r/technicalwriting
- awesome-github-templates - devspace
- makeareadme - dguo
- What nobody tells you about documentation - Daniele Procida
- What I learned from an old GitHub project that won 3,000 Stars in a Week - TOAST UI
- feedmereadmes - Free README editing + feedback to make your open-source projects grow. See the README maturity model to help you keep going
- maintainer.io - Free README standardization and feedback if you click on 'Book an audit'
- Documenting your projects on GitHub - GitHub Guides
- documentation-handbook - jamiebuilds
- Documentation Guide - Write the Docs
This repo is under active development. If you have any improvements / suggestions please file an issue or send in a Pull Request. The TODO.md file or the issues page are a good place to visit if you want to pick up some task. They have a list of things are to be implemented in the near future.