Make sure your instructions are written for your audience, not your organization.

People who buy products need to know how to assemble/install/use the product as easily as possible. And because many people are technodorks like me, instructions need to be understood by the lowest common denominator.

Logically, then, you might think the best person to write instructions for technodorks like me is someone who knows every last detail about the product, how it was made, how it works, what it does, and what its inside leg measurement is.

In other words, an expert. This could not be further from the truth.

Instructions should never be written by experts

Quite simply, experts know too much. Consequently they are very prone to making the mistake of assuming the reader knows a little bit about the subject matter already. To an expert, the fact that before you begin assembling the bookcase you need to align sections A, B and C with each other may be so blindingly obvious it