The main reason engineers, technicians, and programmers write poor technical documents is because they have had little training or experience in that area. This article addresses some of the basics that students can use to master technical writing tasks. The article covers the most common problems writers make and offers suggestions for improving a variety of technical documents. This article is laid out in the most common technical document format: Heading 1, Heading 2, and so forth, to illustrate the use of sections and paragraphs to format for clarity.