I noticed this a few days ago. Im working this contract and they have a fairly old version of Office. Particularly MS Word. Its pre-Office 365. Why does this matter? Well, in just a few short years things change. For some significantly.
In Word 2016 the spell check recommends breaking apart contractions. In more recent versions, the pendulum swung the other way to embrace less formal or academic writing. Contractions are no big thing to it.
The technical writing process can change in similar ways. Perhaps it could be said that no two jobs are the same for a writer.
Capturing Information
Essentially a technical writer is tasked with capturing information. How we do it has changed over the years. Even looking at the evolution of word proccessing software can point this out. Years ago, word processing was quite straightforward, where you were getting info, forming sentences, and writing. We werent coding, markup wasnt a thing just yet. Reusable text was with a photocopier!
Now when we look at all the options, we are more tasked with coding documents in an increasing way. We are bridging the gap from sheer writing, to coding of knowledge. Take writing this page.
The overall plan changes based on the software you are using. For instance, if I had a set of instructions that is 50-100 steps. On this editor, I need to create the steps first and have the numbering set. Then I can insert images and maintain my numbering setup. If I try to go line by line, this editor wont allow me to pick up my numbering and starts from 1 each time I break the flow.