Are you a Technical Writer, or a Creative Writer?

Or both? Know the difference, and why it matters

Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash

On the one hand, there’s language. On the other hand, there’s what language represents — an idea, an event, a memory, every possible subject of writing.

Whether you’re a technical or creative writer depends on what, for you, is the relationship between the two. What you think of this relationship is what influences your choice of the kinds of writing that you do, and the kinds of writing advice you feel drawn to or give others.

If, for example, you aim for crystalline clarity in your writing, for plain language that recedes in the background in favor of the content in itself, you’re a technical writer (or a creative writer wearing a technical writer’s hat — since it’s possible to be both, and my guess is that most of us are both).

This belief that content and language are two separate things, that content exists independently of writing, is what mainly characterizes a technical writer. The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote that the epistemology of the sciences is based on the same idea: the role of science writing is to use language as a tool to communicate (pre-existing) scientific facts and truths.