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Writing a development tutorial requires a few more considerations in comparing to writing a regular article. Readers would have to follow the steps, read code, view demos or examine a picture explaining some feature. Here are several tips that might help you write more efficient tutorials. I won't explain here how important it is to choose the right subject, good title and other things that you can read in many other articles about writing for the web. I will focus on things that are specific for tutorials. Alhtough some of these tips can be applied to any type of article, they are even more significant in tutorials. For more general guidelines on how to write for the web, especially from usability perspective, I recommend you read Writing for the Web series of articles. 1. Make it short but to the point Let's be honest, a very few readers will read the entire tutorial. As with any content on Web they will scan the content instead of reading it. Only if they find an interest in what you are showing they will read. Avoid long paragraphs and series of paragraphs without code snippets or images. Also avoid describing each tiny thing user should do, but rather show the key points in the path to tutorial completion. However, you shouldn't ommit anything important. For example, it is important to explain how an element will be animated with jQuery, but it is completely unnecesary to explain and show each line of HTML structure or CSS code used in tutorial. 2. Explain each task shortly You should be able to explan each task in a few simple sentences. Einstein said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". Imagine what would readers think of your knowledge of the subject and how they would understand it. If you make it too long, go back and rewrite it. 3. Break it into logical steps This will help users read and follow a tutorial more easily, and get back to a specific step if they need to. Each step should contain several tasks after which reader will be able to actually

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Tips for writing an effective tutorial

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