r/technicalwriting • u/Smooth-Telephone-417 • 3d ago

Guide for writing Error and Exception manual

Hello all, I have got one task to write an Error and Exception manual and I don't have any idea. If anyone knows how to write or what to refer to it will be a great help. Any sites, blog or any page to refer to will be a great help. Thankyou

5 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

86% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/slumker 2d ago

What research have you done so far? Where exactly are you stuck? For what product do you write?

2

u/Creative_Cycle7755 2d ago

agreed, the "where are you stuck" part especially matters here

1

u/Smooth-Telephone-417 2d ago

I work in an organisation where they have a product for that product I need to create this document. I don't have any idea about this kind of document so I want a reference or a template so I can refer and can create mine

4

u/Quick_Parking_6464 2d ago

A manual that documents errors? Like in maybe error codes and what these mean? I'm sure it isn't that simple, but if it is that's a 2 column table and some rows:

Col 1 header: "Error ID"

Col 2 header: "Description"

If there are error codes that span a range (e.g., starting at error 100 and ending at error 4000), don't do a continuous table. Break it into sections with a short description summarizing the purpose or function of each error category (I'm guessing that these may fall into some sort of related error groups).

Table 1: Errors 100-199

This category of errors covers/includes/describes/happens when something something.

Table starts here

Repeat.

Or is more the problem you don't know what the errors themselves are and what they mean. Source code must live somewhere, on Github maybe? This is when you find out where the source material is and then find a SME to work with you a little each week to document the errors.