1. Consistency is one of the most important aspects of technical writing. You want to have a consistent design and use typography, headings and spacing in the same way throughout a document. Writing style and tone must also be consistent, especially in group work and writing, so that sentences, verb choices and word choices are similar throughout.

2. Use Active Verbs instead of Passive Verbs and Voice. Avoid verbs like is, was, are, were, has, had, have, do, did, can, could, will, etc. Also avoid starting sentences with pronouns like there, this and it.

• Purdue OWL handout on Active and Passive Voice

3. Use strong verbs instead of idioms. Idioms are verbs made out of a group of words. An example is "made out" in the previous sentence (see the problem?--I could replace that with "constructed"). Try to use one-word verbs in your writing.

• Purdue OWL handout on Idioms

4. Use good sentence variety by varying sentence structure and length. An easy trick is to vary your sentence beginnings to achieve sentence variety.

• Sentence Types and how to use them - Compound, Complex, Compound-Complex
• Subordinating Conjunctions for subordinating clauses in Complex sentences

5. Avoid cliches, slang and colloquial language. Aim for fresh writing that doesn't sound like how you talk.