Find out what most tech writers hope you already know in this free ebook by Tonya Engst. Tonya takes you behind the scenes, explaining why tech writers write the way they do and helping you decode the directions for everything from Desktops to directories, keys to menus, and paths to preferences.

Getting the ebook: Click the book icon at the left to download the ebook in PDF, EPUB, or Mobipocket format, or read it on the Web.

Although Read Me First: A Take Control Crash Course has plenty of basic information about using the Mac (and a few chapters about iOS), its focus is not on helping inexperienced users master important basics. Instead, it focuses on explaining the assumptions that tech writers make when writing directions. This book aims to make sure people reading technical documentation don’t get stuck for the lack of basic know-how, such as how to match the name of your operating system with its numerical version, how to understand written shortcuts for navigating menus, what Control-click means, how to enter something on the command line, how to follow a path, and more.

Because we feel strongly that everyone should know this information, the book is wired with social media options at the end of each chapter, so you can easily share individual chapters with anyone who could use the information.

This book is free to all, but if you’d like to support the effort that went into creating it or to encourage future updates, please head over to the Leanpub site, where you can pay whatever you feel is appropriate.