I have created a plugin which might be useful to you if you write about WordPress plugins and want to be able to show examples of shortcodes usage, but without the shortcodes being processed.
To display the shortcode [gallery] using this plugin you would enter the shortcode: [shortcode]gallery[/shortcode]
The plugin adds a span with the class ‘shortcode’ so you can style your shortcode exmaple.
This plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress.org plugins directory at http://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcode-shortcode/.
Support is available on the plugin’s support forum at http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/shortcode-shortcode.
Alternatively
If you don’t need to style the shortcode or prefer to add a span manually, you may not even need this plugin you could just escape the shortcode by enclosing it in additonal square brackets eg: [[gallery]] which will display as [gallery] a possible drawback to this is that if you later deactivate the plugin both sets of square brackets will be shown.