common output products of technical writing?

Answer 1

I'm not sure what you mean by "common output products". Do you mean, "About what do technical writers commonly write?"

I started as a technical writer. The main area of writing was "help" files for users of hardware and software. For example, "How do you insert an accented e into a Word document?" "How do you align both sides of a paragraph in a Word document?" "How do you write a javascript routine to draw an html calendar table?" "How do you install a new printer?" "How do you change the battery in an iPaq?"

To write these instructions, of course, you'll have to learn more and more about the hardware and software, yourself. You may, and probably will, find yourself evolving out of technical writing and into the realms of hardware and/or software expertise.