Notes from the talk, written up the same evening while the questions were still fresh. ## The premise Most technical writing is addressed to the person sitting next to you. The reader who actually shows up is a stranger, two years later, halfway through a bad day. ## What changes You stop writing "obviously". You define the term the first time. You say what you tried that did not work, because that is the part they cannot reconstruct. ## The question I could not answer Someone asked how you write for a stranger without writing for nobody. I still think the answer is that you pick one real person and let the stranger overhear.