Do you write procedures? Then always KISS and TELL; your readers will love you. Let me explain.

Every halfway decent tech writer understands how and why to KISS — Keep It Short and Simple– but not as many are willing to TELL: Test Every Line for Logic. Writing procedures is, after all, an exercise in clear communication, not an exhaustive process definition.

So here’s how you KISS your readers and TELL them the safest and most efficient way to accomplish a task.

Use the Six Keys

Make sure that you’ve covered the six W’s: Who, When, Why, What Conditions, What Steps, and What Followup.

But that’s just the beginning.

Analyze the Steps

Reversing the proverbial KISS and TELL order, now it’s time to Test Every Line for Logic by analyzing the sequence of steps. Procedures, by their very nature, have to be sequential, and not just any old sequence will do, because:

• If your procedures backtrack or omit critical steps, they’re no better than trial-and-error.
• If your procedures provide “oh, by the way” safety warnings that follow risky operations instead of preemptive warnings that precede the hazardous steps, they’re not just inefficient–they’re dangerous.

To provide instructions that make a logical progression:

1. Make sure you have determined the end goal(s).
   A complex procedure has a grand destination, or end goal, that is the culmination of lots of smaller subprocedures, each of which has its own end goal. For example, a novice cook whose end goal is yummy potato salad actually has several subgoals.
   • Get the potatoes ready (scrub them, cook them peel them, cube them)
   • Prep the eggs (boil them, cool them, peel them, chop them)
   • Put together the dressing (measure and mix mayonnaise, mustard, spices)
2. Account for required conditions.
   Things that the reader must know about, tools he must locate, schedules to be followed–all these things are part of the logical analysis. Describe each required condition at the right place in the procedure–before the user begins the step where the condition becomes significant.

Cut Out the Fat

After you cover who/where/why/what/what/what and test the logical progression of your procedures, it’s time to KISS and break up clumps of unnecessary words, useless modifiers, and superfluous explanation. One of the most effective ways to cut unnecessary words from your procedures is to use pictures.

I once worked with an extremely intelligent woman for whom English is a second language. She always listened carefully to instructions and followed them closely, but sometimes had a difficult time with some of the language used to outline the steps. When she understood what was being conveyed, she always said emphatically: I got a picture!

Include whatever it takes — diagrams, photographs, graphs, charts, line drawings, screenshots — to give your readers a picture of what must or must not happen in the procedure–without squandering words.

Remember — your reader counts on you to guide her safely and efficiently to the successful completion of her task.