How To Use AI In Technical Writing (Create 10x More Content)

Last Updated on May 16, 2023 by Jordan Alexo

Can you use AI to assist your technical writing? Perhaps, you feel exhausted from constantly needing to create high-quality articles consistently.

Well, many people are in your shoes! The fact is writing great content is painful. But fortunately, we have Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing tools.

With these tools, you can write content at a faster pace, proofread your posts in minutes and optimize them for search engines without breaking a sweat.

In this guide, you’ll discover what AI-writing tools are, the different ones currently in the market, and their benefits. Additionally, I’ll share my secret method of using AI to create 10x more content than you usually do.

Let’s get started!

What Is Technical Writing?

Technical writing consists of creating content that covers a wide range of topics from:

• Field guides
• Scripts for videos and podcasts
• Blog posts

It’s commonly used to explain complicated concepts in an easy-to-follow format or even provide detailed directions on accomplishing a specific task. 

Often technical content is written to help readers easily understand what they are reading and not become confused. In other words, it’s not like a novel full of sparkly words and grandiose descriptions.

Anyway, this writing takes skill and expertise as it requires the writer to effectively communicate sometimes complicated subjects in a way that makes sense without boring their readers to death.

Also, commonly this content comes packed with visuals to help explain the concept, which requires some added work.

Now that we know what technical writing is let’s talk about how AI can assist your work.

What Are AI Writing Tools?

As you probably have already figured out, these tools use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to help writers create better content faster.

AI writing tools leverage natural language processing (NLP). Some to analyze documents and provide you with indications on grammar, structure, and style correction. At the same time, others help you write content more quickly.

Some examples:

• Grammarly: is a tool that helps you write better by checking your grammar and style.
• Jasper AI: is a tool that enables you to write better and faster with the help of artificial intelligence.
• Gavagai Explorer: this tool helps you understand what people say online.

These technologies offer different features to help technical writers research topics, get feedback on their writing in seconds and generate content more quickly.

All in all, artificial intelligence helps you produce higher-quality content faster than ever before.

5 Reasons To Use AI To Assist Your Technical Writing

Let’s see why you should use these tools to help you with your technical writing:

Reason 1) Improve Your Grammar And Style

AI can scan a document and provide instant feedback on structure, grammar, and style. It can also recommend alternative words and phrases to help cut down on repetitive sentences.

Reason 2) Decrease Your Research Time

Also, it can assist writers with researching topics, finding related concepts, and even suggesting new topic ideas. This can be especially helpful for technical writers who need to research complex topics quickly and efficiently.

Reason 3) Automate Your Boring Tasks

This technology may help writers cut time by automating tedious tasks like formatting documents or proofreading content.

Reason 4) You Can Write Content Faster

One of the biggest reasons to use AI is that you can produce content faster. For instance, AI writing tools can auto-generate content in seconds, allowing you to create multiple drafts of a document or blog post quickly.

Reason 5) Save Your Precious Time

If you can produce content faster, you can dedicate more time to other essential aspects. Perhaps, spending more time with your family or other business-oriented things.

5 AI Technologies Available For Technical Writing

Now that you know what it is and why to use AI writing tools, let’s talk more in-depth about the most powerful ones in the market.

1) Jasper AI

Jasper AI is a writing assistant that helps technical writers produce better content faster and more efficiently. You can ask the AI to write an outline for your blog posts or books. Also, it can quickly generate content about any topic you can think about.

I’ve been using this tool for several months, and before, it took me two days to write a 2000-word post; Nowadays, I can do the same in two hours. Plus, it alleviates the tiredness that happens from writing daily.

Which sometimes causes us to have writer’s block and even burn-out. Jasper is a potent tool and a must-have for any technical writer.

2) Grammarly

Grammarly is a tool that helps you write better by checking your grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

The tool also provides personalized writing suggestions to help you make your content more professional. You can use the tool online or install their browser app to receive suggestions on documents, emails, and other online content.

If I had to choose one AI tool from this list, it would be Grammarly. This tool is essential no matter what type of writing you’re doing and helps ensure that your content is always error-free.

3) Surfer SEO

I wouldn’t exactly consider this AI writing tool like the ones mentioned before. Still, it helps with content creation and optimization.

Surfer SEO analyzes your competitors’ content and provides valuable insights to help you write better.

It can also help you optimize your content for SEO by suggesting the right keywords to use and providing feedback on title tags, meta descriptions, etc.

Suppose you have a website and want organic traffic (why wouldn’t you?), then search engine optimization is vital! Otherwise, search engines like Google will struggle to find and rank your content appropriately.

Over the years, SEO has become more complicated as search engines have become more sophisticated. For this reason, Surfer SEO can help any beginner or experienced writer optimize their content without spending months learning SEO.

4) Quillbot

Quillbot is an AI-powered paraphrasing tool that can help you rewrite your content quickly and accurately.

It can help you rewrite sentences, paragraphs, or even entire documents in just a few seconds. In my experience, this tool has come in handy for quickly rewriting content to make it more exciting.

5) ChatGPT

Well, we couldn’t leave ChatGPT out! If you haven’t been living on top of a mountain for the last few months, then you have certainly heard about it.

So, it works by you asking questions to ChatGPT, and in return, it gives you detailed answers. In other words, you can ask ChatGPT to generate conversations between characters, write stories, fill in missing pieces of dialogue – or, my favorite, “to craft a list of weird cocktail recipes.”

Although they have a premium plan with some added features, you can still use ChatGPT free version. I have been testing their artificial intelligence for a few weeks and still haven’t got great results.

In my experience, ChatGPT can help you automate some parts of the writing process, especially outlining and blog content. However, you’ll still need to spend some time editing the output if you want it not to sound like the Terminator wrote your article.

5 Steps For Using AI Writing Tools To Speed Your Technical Writing

I will share my formula for writing technical content for my blog. You can adapt the same method to write books or other types of content. I will focus on blogging because, well, I’m a blogger.

But I have written books, and the process is similar. You only need to remove SEO from the equation, and you’re good!

Step 1) Research Your Topic

Before you can start writing, you need to research your topic. Use Google to search for relevant articles, books, or videos.

Although artificial intelligence can speed up your research process, you should always have a basic understanding of the topic. One of the problems of Jasper AI or any other similar tool is that the AI sometimes provides bizarre information.

And if you don’t want readers to laugh at your content or call you names, then it’s best to have at least some basic knowledge to avoid these situations.

Also, you should list several topics you’d like to write about.

Step 2) Outline Your Content

No matter what you do, your outline is the building block for your content. Once you have one, writing the rest of the content is easier.

To write a good blog post, you must first check what your competitors are doing. So, simply Google your main topic idea and see the results.

Analyze the first three pages of results and note what you must include in your post.

After a few minutes, you should have a nice outline based on your gathered information. Or, if you prefer the lazy route, head over to Jasper ai and use the following command: “create an outline for my blog post (should be your main topic).”

The AI will provide a good list of points for your content. Remember to check the results for accuracy and select what you want to include in your post.

Step 3) Write Your Content

Once you have a good outline, it’s time to start writing. You can use Jasper AI or another similar tool to help you write your article.

At this point, you should have your outline on the text editor. You can go to each heading and ask the AI to generate a few sentences or paragraphs for you.

It’s important to note that AI tools may not always get it right, so edit the output until it makes sense.

You can also take advantage of AI’s ability to rewrite your content. If you’re running out of ideas or simply want to give your article a more natural look, simply paste your text and ask the AI to rewrite it.

Make sure to include your experiences and stories into the mix. That’s something that AI can’t do for you. And it gives your readers a more human experience when reading your content.

Step 4) Proofread and Edit

Proofreading and editing are essential to make your content top-notch. 

So, you should check it for spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, and other small details. And for this reason, Grammarly comes in handy.

You should copy and paste the content created on Jasper to a new document on Grammarly. After a few minutes, Grammarly will show all the errors you need to correct.

Also, their integrated plagiarism checker guarantees your content is fresh like a mint candy (seriously?).

One piece of advice, don’t go through your writing and accept all the suggested corrections because this can mess up your content.

Step 5) SEO Like There’s No Tomorrow

Well, if you have a book, SEO is not the most important thing here. For this reason, you can skip this section like it never existed.

But if you’re writing a blog post, then optimizing it for search engines is essential. Your content needs an optimized title (it should have your main keyword), meta description, and eye-catching images.

If you aren’t sure about your meta description, you can use Jasper AI and ask the AI to generate a meta description.

Also, include your main keyword at least once in the first paragraph, and make sure to have at least one internal link in your blog post.

If you’d like to speed up this process, then Surfer SEO is your tool. Thanks to its AI algorithms, it provides all the data needed to optimize your content for SEO purposes.

For high-quality images, you can try the following websites:

• Unsplash
• Pixabay
• Canva.com

Over there, you can find all the images you need for your projects.

And lastly, go to your blog and publish your post. Remember to include your main keyword on the URL extension, and you should be good to go.

And that’s it! With a few minutes of your time, AI tools can help you write, proofread, and optimize your blog post in no time.

Last Thoughts

As you can see, AI writing tools can be incredibly helpful for technical writers. With Jasper AI, for example, you can create outlines with relevant points to your main topic.

And use it to pump out more content than humanly possible. On the other end, Grammarly can help you proofread and correct grammar and spelling errors in no time.

Lastly, Surfer SEO can help you optimize for search engines and find high-quality images to use on your project.

So, you should consider utilizing artificial intelligence to help you with your writing. With the right tools, you can create high-quality content quickly and efficiently.

What do you think? Do AI writing tools have a place in technical writing? Share your thoughts below!