Here’s a page showing 10 words you need to stop misspelling (or in some cases, misusing) and funny ways to remember the correct word.
Technical Writing
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Most Topular Stories
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10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling
Core Dump 2.06 Feb 2012 | 9:53 am -
Collaborative Authoring and Communication Tools Help Writers, Editors, SMEs Work Together
The Content Wrangler7 Feb 2012 | 1:27 pmBy David Kowalsky, Guest Editor David Kowalsky Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with trying to keep track of all the versions of a document that are being sent back-and-forth by you and your work colleagues by email? When opening a document to edit, have you ever had the experience of being frustrated by immediately seeing a message pop up telling you that the document is locked? Many companies have introduced features to their products to alleviate these types of issues, making collaborative authoring– projects where written works are created by multiple people together… -
Five Areas in 2012 That Technical Writers Need to Know
Chicwriter4 Jan 2012 | 1:14 pmThis is also true of systems that businesses and government agencies use. The systems were not as robust, and a lot of them have been (or will be) updated to keep up with the demands of today. With this, also comes the documentation that tells the beginning, middle, and end of these systems. This is from the project planning, requirements gathering and analysis, and the end-user documents. Due to the close tie-in between documentation and systems, technical writing has also evolved alongside technology. -
A Picture Is Worth...hmmmm
The Humane Experience16 Nov 2011 | 7:26 amI think we use icons way too much! I'm working on a project right now where we are updating a web app and so I'm getting to talk to users and customers. One weakness that keeps coming up is that they can't figure out the icons. Not all of them, and that's been the important aha for me. Here's my new insight: Icons that differentiate among broad categories = good Icons that differentiate among -
Funeral arrangements for Carol Johnston
Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog25 Jan 2012 | 1:40 amThe funeral for Carol Johnston will be held held at 2.15pm on Tuesday 31 January, at chapel at Oxford Crematorium. Our office will be closed on that afternoon. It will be a Humanist service, with... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]
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ffeathers -- a technical writer's blog
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Translating documentation developed on Confluence wiki
4 Feb 2012 | 11:02 pmA few people have asked me recently about translating content into other languages, and what functionality Confluence provides to help that process. This post is a summary of what I know, in the hope that it will give people pointers to follow up on. It’s also an invitation to share what you know about translating technical documentation. We don’t translate our own documentation yet, so this post is based on conversations with people who need to translate their documentation, on my subsequent investigations, and on a couple of presentations I’ve attended. The presentations… -
Writing a book with DocBook and a Confluence wiki
28 Jan 2012 | 9:33 pmWe’re in the final stages before sending my book off to the printers. Exciting! While we wait, let me tell you a bit about how the publishing team and I have produced the book. We’re using a Confluence wiki and DocBook XML. Here’s our process in brief: Plan, write and review the book on a Confluence site. Use the Scroll Wiki DocBook Exporter to convert the content to DocBook XML. Use DocBook XSL-FO style sheets to create a PDF file for sending to the printers. Use XSL to generate ebook formats too. This post is about writing and reviewing the book on the wiki, and… -
Guess a name to win a copy of my book
13 Jan 2012 | 2:02 pmWould you like to have some fun, and perhaps win a copy of my upcoming book too? Just guess the name of the girl on the cover! The first person to get it right will receive a free copy of the book, in a choice of paperback or ebook format. The book is all about using a wiki for technical communication. It’s called Confluence, Tech Comm, Chocolate: A wiki as platform extraordinare for technical communication. It will be published in February by Richard Hamilton at XML Press. The book cover I love the illustrations in the book, and especially the picture on the cover. They are the work of… -
REST API documentation embedded in the application
12 Jan 2012 | 1:07 amOur development team has built a tool that documents an application’s REST APIs within the application itself. What’s more, you can test the REST resources and methods too. All from the application’s user interface. Now, that’s embedded help for nerds. I’m writing this post because I think many technical writers and developers will be interested in this solution. It may trigger ideas about adding something similar to other applications too. The tool is called the REST API Browser, and it is implemented as a plugin. At the moment, it is available only within the… -
Should we allow comments on documentation pages
6 Jan 2012 | 6:11 pmThis is a very interesting question: Should we, as technical writers, allow comments on our documentation pages? It’s interesting because it’s a multi-faceted question, and because people have such strong feelings about it. My quick answer is, “Yes”. Ha ha, but there’s always a “but” or two. Read on, and then I’d love to know what you think. I’m a technical writer at a company called Atlassian. We write all our product documentation on a wiki. For example, here is the Confluence user’s guide. What’s more, we have configured the…
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Just Write Click
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Exciting Future for Collaborative Printed Electronic Books
6 Feb 2012 | 8:40 amThe future of the book is in your hands from Sourcefabric on Vimeo. Sourcefabric builds open source software to support independent media worldwide. On February 14th, we’ll announce our tool to help people and organisations write and publish great multi-platform books. Write and publish great books ready for iPad, Kindle, Nook or print within minutes. Write, translate or reuse content by yourself or with others and let the platform take care of structure, formatting, licensing, versions and export to book formatted pdf, epub, odt or html. Share, reuse and remix content, chapters or even… -
Pick a beat for release notes
23 Jan 2012 | 9:50 pmThis is fun. Fedora has “beat writers” which harken to journalists tracking a story. Each beat is a section in the release notes. I found it while poking around on the Fedora wiki pages that describe how they do documentation. See fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_Beats. I like this approach for a few reasons. One is that the term “beat” seems fresh. While I did have to look for the definition of “beat writer,” I had a notion in the back of my mind and it turned out to be correct. My initial reaction was, oh, it’s like a journalist chasing down a… -
From Cement to Spandex – Making PDF and ePub
2 Dec 2011 | 3:46 pmWhich statement is true: “PDFs are like cement.” or “Gentlemen prefer PDF.” Turns out both are true! See my recent OpenStack blog entry, Hacking on Ebooks, for more context and attributions for those statements. We recently held a hackathon which I blogged about earlier to discuss the prep work for creating epub from DocBook XML source for the OpenStack and Rackspace manuals. We had a very successful day of hacking on 11/11/11. A team of about seven writers, testers, and developers worked all day to try to make epub files. And sure enough, we did it! Our list of bugs… -
DocBook, ePub, Hackathon, What More Could You Ask For?
9 Nov 2011 | 9:35 amThis Friday, on 11/11/11, the Austin Rackspace office is holding a Hackathon. The projects range from “fix the arcade game” to “install notification system to indicate availability of the men’s room” to my pet hack project, “create epub output for Rackspace and OpenStack manuals.” Here’s a short introduction about making epubs from the FLOSS Manuals book, E-Book Enlightenment. Of all the formats for e-books only EPUB combines small file sizes with the ability to do formatted text and illustrations. An EPUB is like a website contained in a Zip… -
Fabric Welding and Costume Making
2 Nov 2011 | 5:36 pmAt Rackspace we get these great email threads due to an email list designated for “fun” at each core location. One of these such email threads started with a guy asking if any other guys do sewing – and wondering where he could learn to sew on projects that were gender-neutral? He wasn’t going to make a purse, after all, he needed to hem pants and wondered about suit making. The best part of the thread was when he invented a term, fabric welding, to see if he could get more interest that way. It was a fabulous turn of phrase, though I don’t know if it garnered…
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The Content Wrangler
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Collaborative Authoring and Communication Tools Help Writers, Editors, SMEs Work Together
7 Feb 2012 | 1:27 pmBy David Kowalsky, Guest Editor David Kowalsky Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with trying to keep track of all the versions of a document that are being sent back-and-forth by you and your work colleagues by email? When opening a document to edit, have you ever had the experience of being frustrated by immediately seeing a message pop up telling you that the document is locked? Many companies have introduced features to their products to alleviate these types of issues, making collaborative authoring– projects where written works are created by multiple people together… -
[Grammar Girl Webinar Followup] The Recording, The Winners, The Slides
6 Feb 2012 | 4:47 pmDuring our recent webinar with Grammar Girl, ten registrants were selected at random to receive a free copy of the best-selling book for writers, “The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl”. And the winners are…. Howard Gold — Commack, NY Kim McCarty — Dallas, TX Trish Smith — Ottawa, ON Canada Stephanie Welsh — O’Fallon, MO Cindy Clark — Bethesda, MD Amy Silverman — Redwood City, CA Leah Goodman — Portland, OR Meghan Cowell — Burlington, ON Canada Fred Ridder — Bridgewater, NJ Richard… -
Understanding Word of Mouth Marketing
4 Feb 2012 | 10:41 amStraight from the horse’s mouth? Sorry, we could’t resist. This video from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), does a great job of demystifying word of mouth marketing. WOMMA is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and advocating the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing and promoting word of mouth as a solution to business challenges. -
[Great Ideas Gone Wrong] Unlisted Video: Adobe Photoshop Evangelist Campaign Makes Finding “Hidden Gems” Challenging
31 Jan 2012 | 4:57 pmHere at The Content Wrangler, we love social marketing techniques that engage users and create a desire for interaction with the brand. The Adobe Photoshop “hidden gems” campaign illustrates this point nicely. It’s brief, focused on learning from the customer by asking them what they think in a way that encourages their active participation, and its transparent — everyone will get to see all the entries and judge for themselves the value of the ideas submitted. Adobe offers recognition and real-world rewards for the winner. It’s a win-win for all involved. And,… -
iBooks 2 and iBooks Author: One Week Later, What We’ve Learned — An Executive Round Table with McGraw-Hill, Digital Book World, and Aptara
23 Jan 2012 | 5:51 pmYet again Apple stopped us in our tracks. We awaited each word with bated breath during last Thursday’s unveiling of iBooks2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U. Now what? After a week of social media frenzy, water cooler chatter, thoughtful analysis, and technical digging, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve learned. Join us Thursday, January 26 for a live round table discussion with McGraw-Hill – one of Apple’s education partners; Digital Book World – the publishing industry’s premier digital publishing forum; and Aptara – trusted digital solutions partner to the…
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I Came, I Saw, I Learned...
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Adobe Captivate: A Clean Break from PowerPoint
8 Feb 2012 | 8:41 amby Kevin Siegel Many Captivate projects begin in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you've never tried to import a PowerPoint presentation, you'll find it an easy process. All you have to do is choose From Microsoft PowerPoint (located at the right of the Welcome screen). After opening the PowerPoint presentation, you will be presented with a dialog that will allow you to control, among other things, the size of the presentation when it is converted to a Captivate project.At the bottom of the dialog box, you will find an innocent-looking check box next to Linked. If… -
Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Document Properties
6 Feb 2012 | 3:22 pmby Barb Binder It's easy to ignore the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat. You may never even think about it as you create, enhance and review your PDFs. But if you start amassing a large collection of PDFs, ignoring the Description tab would be a mistake. The Description fields are easily searched (both locally and online) and taking a few minutes to fill them out as you go will save you the headache of realizing a few years down the road that you should have been doing it all along. My personal rule is to make sure… -
eLearning: Discover Your Learner's Thinking Style
2 Feb 2012 | 10:27 amby AJ George Do you wish you could get inside the head of your learners and know exactly how their thought processes work? Me too, but we can't all be Professor Xavier.Learning assessments provider Pearson TalentLens has managed to make a bit of self-examination possible at least. They have created the My Thinking Styles assessment to help people explore their unique thinking styles. The two part online assessment is free, takes only minutes to complete, and provides a basic report of the participant's thinking styles.The service is not perfect. -
PowerPoint & Articulate Studio: Resolve Performance Issues
1 Feb 2012 | 2:13 pmby AJ George While working with a PowerPoint developer this week I learned that she was experiencing performance issues while using PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter.I looked into her issues and found that it's a bad idea to work from a network or USB drive. In fact, it appears that doing so can cause crashes. The Articulate web site suggests that developers ensure that all associated files (presentations, audio, quizzes, etc) are on the C drive or local hard drive.If you are sure you are working locally but are still seeing performance issues, try running a… -
Adobe Captivate: Sometimes Manual Labor is the Best Kind of Labor
31 Jan 2012 | 10:30 amby Kevin Siegel During the recording process, Captivate typically does a wonderful job of creating screen captures on processes you perform within an application. I said "typically" because there are occasions when Captivate fails to create some of the screen captures and you are left in a bit of a pickle. You won't know Captivate missed an important screen capture until you stop the recording process and begin producing the lesson in Captivate. By then, the missing screen(s) may require you to record additional slides.Assuming you are using…
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I'd Rather Be Writing
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A Reverse Approach to Help Authoring: Writing Documentation Post-Release
2 Feb 2012 | 12:33 amWhen I first started as a technical writer, a senior writer taught me how to write documentation. Her approach, which aligns with the traditional way of doing technical writing, generally followed these steps: Get involved as early as you can in the software development process. As soon as prototypes are available, or a functioning development environment, start the documentation process. Think of all the main tasks users will do with the application. Make a list of the tasks and begin documenting them in careful detail. As the application nears release, finalize your help material so that… -
Brainstorming Solutions to Volunteer Management/Engagement
1 Feb 2012 | 9:56 amI am constantly reflecting on the answer to this question: How can I draw upon the enthusiasm, intelligence, and skill of willing volunteers all around me to take our organization’s site to the next level? This goal mostly relates to my involvement in my organization’s technology blog, which has about 80 volunteer writers. In my post about what I learned during 2011 as a technical communicator, I wrote: Community collaboration is extremely tough to pull off. I can’t just assign a volunteer writer a topic and let them run with it. I usually have to either gather the information… -
Messages from Sponsors — January 2012
30 Jan 2012 | 9:06 amBelow are a few messages from my blog’s sponsors. Check them out and see if any interest you. Many of them have upcoming webinars. News from Madcap MadCap Software is pleased to present free live webinars from industry experts covering a variety of topics essential for today’s technical writers. Sign up today to advance your professional skills and learn about the latest trends in technical communication. Moving from FrameMaker to Flare | Feb 7, 10:00-11:00 am (Pacific Time) Are you using FrameMaker as your primary authoring tool? While Frame is great for book publishing, it… -
STC Certification: An In-Depth Interview with Steve Jong
26 Jan 2012 | 10:11 pmThe following is a guest post by Steve Jong, chair of the STC Certification Commission. What does the certification program involve? First, for an introduction to the subject, I recommend the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_certification. Our Certified Professional Technical Communicator™ (CPTC) credential provides assurance to employers and the public that the certified practitioner possesses the knowledge, skill, and ability expected of a competent technical communicator to meet the demands of technical communication projects, today and tomorrow. To… -
Interview with Ugur Akinci about Technical Communication
23 Jan 2012 | 4:41 pmUgur Akinci The following is an interview with Ugur Akinci, a technical writer for Honeywell Corporation. Ugur asked me these same questions for an interview on this site. After answering them, I was curious about how he would answer the same questions, so I asked Ugur to respond to the questions for my site as well. (1) How long you’ve been a technical communicator? Where do you work right now? How would you characterize a typical day at work? I’ve been a technical communicator for over 13 years, lucky enough to be working for Fortune 100 hi-tech corporations. Currently I work for…
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THE BOGGLISH HUDERON
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three-tiered approach to online faculty development
1 Feb 2012 | 8:49 amThe folks down at Drexel have a nice stable model for developing online faculty. I think this approach because it's a "cover all the avenues" strategy. It's a not a shotgun splatter that hopes to hit something.Tier 1: Workshops and CoursesOnline and F2F (faculty presenting to other faculty)Use Adobe Connect Pro and CaptivateTier 2: Just-in-Time SupportFaculty samples site-- Repository of samples, examples, best practicesResource Portal-- Emphasis on the technology, tutorialsTier 3: One on OneInstructional designer and faculty relationship to deliver and design an online course.The ratio of… -
overcoming perceived barriers by enfranchising faculty
31 Jan 2012 | 7:49 amOh random thoughts of progress...What is our growth of part-time faculty, adjuncts, lecturers, etc.? This is part of the trend and equation. What are the resistors to online teaching for full-time faculty?Can we look at a model of faculty (full-time or otherwise) at a distance?What percentage of our faculty/instructors teaching in the iMBA and iSchool programs are on-campus? Do we have remote faculty in those programs?General question for preparing faculty: Should we require faculty to teach the course at least once in a F2F format before allowing them (or preparing them) to teach the… -
putting the pieces together
30 Jan 2012 | 11:13 amWe continue to work toward an institutional vision for online undergraduate instruction. It continues to be good and challenging work. In regard to the challenges, we have many. The biggest (at this point -- today) may be effectively communicating or providing a clearing house for information regarding online teaching and learning. Should it be web-based, a dedicated site, a series of road shows, or frequent workshops? Should it be all of the above? There is no way currently to share best practices here; no forum in which to vet and consider options, policies, procedures, etc. On the tail of… -
time and location
12 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pmThe industry trade journals all predicted that smart phones and tablets would overtake PC shipments by the end of last year. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I’ve been curious to see how this trend plays out with our traditional age undergrads. If we work from the assumption that mobility eliminates time and space boundaries, then we can assume a predilection for content that can be “consumed” any time/any place.This isn’t a new concept, but it does serve our ongoing conversations about the use of technology to maximize classroom time. If, as some argue, SU will never see a… -
progress at any pace
11 Jan 2012 | 3:22 pmI had the opportunity yesterday to attend an online teaching and learning prep session hosted by the SU Writing Program (WP). The WP has shown extraordinary vision in this regard, as they’ve been hosting these events at least once a year for the past six or so years. The sessions are now required for any Professional Writing Instructor (adjunct) or doctoral student interested in teaching an online writing course.This year, a scholar who I’ve long admired as a teacher’s teacher gave a terrific overview of her strategy for engaging students in an online course. It was interesting to see…
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[: technically speaking :]
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On hold
18 Jan 2012 | 8:54 amI had put a link to a Twitter account here ... but I'm going to be pursuing a different strategy, working with NI's existing social media team. So if you read this post earlier ... never mind! :-) -
Entering Edits
1 Apr 2011 | 10:56 amHello Internet-land, it's been awhile since I posted here. But I work on inspiration, and lately there hasn't been much of that driving any blog posts. I've been at NI for over six years now (crazy to think I've been writing this blog for like five of those years) and think I know pretty darn well how to write effective end-user documentation. Plus, I'm human and have an ego. Put these two facts -
Customer's Language Redux
28 Sep 2010 | 3:00 pmI've talked here before about speaking the customer's language. Yesterday I saw a post from another technical writing blog that reinforces this point. I quote: === ....[A] user may want to send a letter to many different people. If the user doesn't know about the mail merge feature, they will insanely copy and paste all the letters. Having an index entry of mail merge is useless, because if -
Designing for your Audience
30 Jul 2010 | 9:47 amToday's xkcd (a fantastically geeky webcomic) is about designing for your audience ... http://xkcd.com/773/ The parallels to technical writing are obvious :-) How can you know what to write if you don't know what information your audience is looking for? -
I Don't Want You to Think
25 May 2010 | 2:44 pmNo, really, I don't! At least, not when reading my documentation. One of my guiding principles behind writing & reviewing technical documentation is "Remove the burden of thought from the customer." After all, our customers are NOT getting paid to read documentation. They're not even getting paid to figure out how to program in LabVIEW. They are getting paid to solve problems. So when I'm
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CyberText Newsletter
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Word: Insert a space between a number and a letter
7 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmA document I edited the other day was peppered with hundreds of values followed immediately by the unit of measure (e.g. 5km, 20mm, 50m/s etc.). Our house style follows the Australian Style Manual, which is to have a space between almost every value and its unit of measure (e.g. 5 km, 20 mm, 50 m/s). While I could run several find and replace (F/R) passes looking for various measurement units (e.g. km) and then replacing them with a space followed by the measurement unit, there were a LOT of different units used and some, such as ‘m’ for meter, weren’t easy to catch using… -
Prize offerings
6 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmI’m a member of several organizations, some paid, some not. I’m a registered customer with several websites (e.g. Amazon). Some organizations pride themselves on being ‘international’ — they actively encourage members from outside the US/Canada, they use ‘international’ in their promotional material, and they ‘talk the talk’. But when it comes to it, ‘international’ really has no meaning for them. Amazon, for example, has offers, prizes, deals, and promotions that are only available to US citizens, and/or those with a US… -
Context is everything
5 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmOne of the problems with Twitter is that you only have 140 characters in which to deliver your message. That’s also an advantage because you have to hone your writing skills significantly. However, honing your writing often means that the context of your message is lost, with the result that it can be misinterpreted. Badly. The other thing with Twitter messages is that you don’t always know how your message will be interpreted by your followers in other countries, or who speak other languages. Some words (particularly words that are colloquial, vernacular, or location-specific)… -
Creating an eBook from a Word document
2 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmThese notes are to remind me what I did to create an eBook from a Word document in case I have to create more. They are not step-by-step instructions — they are just my notes from my first foray into creating eBooks. Some background: I have an Android phone, so was only able to test on that platform. Process Format the Word document so that it uses Heading styles for each section. Minimal formatting elsewhere. Save the Word doc as filtered HTML. Optional: Clean up the resulting HTML using Word Cleaner (use the Clean up existing Word HTML files conversion option; however, this can strip… -
Word: Change case after a period
1 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmI couldn’t find an easy way to change the case of a lower case letter after a period using Find/Replace (see Matthew’s 25 January 2012 comment on this blog post). My wildcard skills just aren’t sophisticated enough! However, I did a bit of hunting on the internet and found a couple of macros. I modified them slightly and this one below is the result. Full kudos for this macro goes to and DonMacnaughto and Lene Fredborg (http://www.microsoft-word-answers.com/microsoft/Word-VBA/29231545/repeatedly-change-first-letter-after-periodblank-to-uppercase.aspx). Please note: Be sure…
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A Tech Writer's World
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Own up to your docs
3 Feb 2012 | 10:32 amManagers often ask: "Who owns the documentation?" Our response, of course, is another question: "What do you mean by own?"Legally own?If by "own" you meanwho legally owns the documentation, the answer is the company that you work for. They hire you to create the document, therefore they own you, or least the time that you spend working for them. Everything that you create during that time is theirs. Owning the maintenance? If by "own" you mean, who is responsible for maintaining and updating the documentation, the answer had better be the technical communicator. However, this question leads… -
A Transcendent Man
22 Dec 2011 | 1:51 pmIf I could meet any person alive today, it would undoubtedly be Raymond Kurzweil. One of the most brilliant thinkers on the planet, he is a distinguished scientist, inventor, author and futurist. His inventions include:optical character recognition (OCR)text-to-speech synthesisspeech recognition technologysampling musical keyboards If that weren't enough, Kurzweil accurately predicted:the collapse of the Soviet Unionthe defeat of the best human chess player by a computer the rapid growth of the Internet, and its move to a wireless formatthe increase in popularity of cell phones, and their… -
A Relatively Unique Document
3 Dec 2011 | 1:01 pm(Part One of Two)It's quite amazing when a theory that's over than a century old continues to make the news.European scientists claimed to have discovered subatomic particles (neutrinos) that can travel faster than light. If it's true, it would contradict a major portion of Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which states that nothing can travel faster than light. Other scientists are therefore claiming that this new discovery must be wrong.Now I'm no scientist, but saying that something is wrong because it contradicts the current model is not science. All science is built on… -
Another Relatively Unique Document
25 Nov 2011 | 3:09 pmWelcome to relativity, part two.In part one, we looked at relativity's laws regarding motion, gravity, and light. Part two will explore the connections between mass, energy, space, and time. It's all about ME (Mass and Energy)Everyone knows e=mc2, Einstein's famous equation uniting mass and energy. This formula indicates that a small amount of mass contains a tremendous amount of energy.Atomic weapons graphically illustrate this: a small amount of unstable, radioactive material is forced to rapidly decay releasing a huge amount of energy in a massive explosion. Nuclear power plants do… -
A Technical Communication Occupation
23 Nov 2011 | 5:31 pmThe Occupy Movement hurtles towards its expected demise. With the Occupiers (a.k.a. urban campers) now evicted from their various parks, this movement is headed the way of the hippies. As New York City mayor Bloomberg eloquently stated: “Protesters have had two months to occupy the park with tents and sleeping bags. Now they will have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments.” What they shall they do to occupy their time?Has the Occupy movement had any effect? As the Premier of China said when asked in the 1970s about the effect of the French Revolution 100 years prior: "It…
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The Humane Experience
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Not right does not mean wrong
25 Jan 2012 | 9:50 amI'm reading a really good document about risk analysis, and the author makes the point that when using probabilities to make predictions, at some point the future will unfold in a way that will make others perceive you were wrong. He emphasized "perceive" and that got me thinking. We do that a lot. Someone does their analysis, makes a decision, and then acts on it. Like a football coach that -
Think Aloud Is More than Talk Aloud
16 Jan 2012 | 11:58 amNielsen's current Alert Box reinforces that think-aloud is a great usability test tool. I couldn't agree more, but I'd like to add some in-the-trenches wisdom I learned from my first usability mentor, Loren Burke. There is a big difference between someone thinking out loud about the task they are doing and someone voicing their opinion about the design. The first is very valuable; the second, meh -
It ain't the walk, it's the talk.
20 Dec 2011 | 10:27 amI have a new column out today in UXmatters. It has to do with managing design tensions, but I talk a little in it about Action Science. During my doctoral research, in which I studied how development teams learn collectively during usability tests, I came across a field called Action Science, which analyzes dysfunctional communication with a focus on resolving contradictions between stated -
A Picture Is Worth...hmmmm
16 Nov 2011 | 7:26 amI think we use icons way too much! I'm working on a project right now where we are updating a web app and so I'm getting to talk to users and customers. One weakness that keeps coming up is that they can't figure out the icons. Not all of them, and that's been the important aha for me. Here's my new insight: Icons that differentiate among broad categories = good Icons that differentiate among -
A Most Unlikely Pub
11 Nov 2011 | 7:36 amOn Wednesday I went to the Irish Bred Pub in Rex, Georgia. Rex (now that I've been there, I feel as if I am on a first-name basis with the town) is a bit south of Atlanta, just off exit 2 on I-675. I went there to celebrate David Ellis's birthday and to hear his band, 3-Way Street, play. I've been in pubs all around Ireland and consider myself to know one when I see one. The one in Rex is,
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Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog
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Introducing the Head Up Display. Say hello to the future of the menu
8 Feb 2012 | 1:51 amThe Ubuntu operating system is to replace its application menus with a “head-up display” (HUD) box. According to Mark Shuttleworth, Lead design and product strategy person at the company... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]] -
Do Technical Authors do anything important?
27 Jan 2012 | 3:05 amChatting at the Royal Institution just before Christmas, someone asked me “But do you do anything important?”. They were slightly embarrassed when they realised what they’d said,... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]] -
Come and speak at our “Trends in Technical Documentation” talks
26 Jan 2012 | 2:35 amCherryleaf is curating and hosting a programme of talks on trends in technical documentation. At these sessions, there’s a presentation from a respected member of the Technical Communication... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]] -
Funeral arrangements for Carol Johnston
25 Jan 2012 | 1:40 amThe funeral for Carol Johnston will be held held at 2.15pm on Tuesday 31 January, at chapel at Oxford Crematorium. Our office will be closed on that afternoon. It will be a Humanist service, with... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]] -
Carol Johnston, one of the founders of Cherryleaf, passed away today
22 Jan 2012 | 2:40 pmCarol Johnston, one of the founders and a director of Cherryleaf, passed away today. It’s naturally terribly sad news. However, Carol had more than 40 years of life – a life to be... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]
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Communications from DMN
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Taking a look at Creating a Website: The Missing Manual
6 Feb 2012 | 7:03 amI’m often surprised at how many people in our wacky profession have little or no knowledge of HTML. While I do know a number of technical writers who are dab hands with HTML, I know far too many who’ve never touched the code and don’t want to. Which is unfortunate. Why? I think that some level of knowledge of HTML is an essential skill for technical communicators. It helped me get my first real job in the business back in the 1990s. There are a number of other reasons that you should know HTML. I’ll talk about a few later. But how to learn HTML? There are any number of… -
Effectively presenting information, no matter what you’re writing
30 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amThis one comes under the banner of Getting back to basics … For those of us who do it for a living, writing is a way of paying the bills. But writing is, first and foremost, a method of communication. It’s putting thoughts and ideas and opinions out in the wild. How you do that is as important as what you want to say. If you don’t do the job properly, you’ll quickly lose your audience and your efforts will have been wasted. How do you do the job properly? Here are a few thoughts. Know your audience This is fundamental advice, but it’s easy to ignore or forget. -
Writing with bullets, a bit too much?
23 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amI have to admit that I find the book Writing in Bullets to be quite valuable and useful. It’s a good guide to writing concisely, and for using bullets effectively. Unfortunately, over the last few years I’ve been seeing bullets used to replace crisp, well-thought-out writing. And that’s forced me to think about 1) how bullets should be used, 2) how bullets are used, and 3) how I use them when writing. How bullets should be used At least, as far as I’m concerned … Bullets should be used to: Summarize key points List action items Introduce concepts that will follow… -
Take a cue from the trades when starting your business
16 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amWhen you’re starting out as a freelance technical writer (or in any business, for that matter), you run into difficulties and choices. Like how to hang out your shingle, how to market your wares, your pricing structure, and more. One way that you can do this is canvass other freelancers. That might net you some information. Then again, there are freelancers of all stripes out there who play with their cards close to their chests. They might be reluctant to share information, especially with someone who they perceive to be a potential competitor. A couple of weeks ago, I was going… -
Weekly links roundup
13 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amGetting a little respect for technical writing Thoughts about gender-neutral technical writing A look at going from FrameMaker to EPUB Web analytics for content planning What is collaboration?
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Core Dump 2.0
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SF predictions: hit and missed
8 Feb 2012 | 4:01 amOn Charlie Stross’ blog, Cat Valente (who’s filling in for Stross while he travels), has one of the better articles I’ve seen about science fiction and predictions. There’s a popular idea that SF predicts the future, but that’s not the case – there are very few instances in the literature where SF predicted a technology, a device, or an event in any real detail. Rather SF imagines futures that might be and how we’d live in them. More often than not, SF authors get it wrong, usually by omission – no one predicted that the moon landing would be… -
Good JavaScript, CSS site
7 Feb 2012 | 9:17 amI’m not sure where I came across Dynamic Drive but as soon as I saw it, I bookmarked it. The site has an extensive collection of JavaScript scripts, CSS snippets, and other resources for web designers. Many of these will be useful for enhancing online help if you’re producing web-based help. -
More on Bill C-11 and links to SOPA
7 Feb 2012 | 4:02 amMichael Geist has put together a FAQ on the forthcoming Bill C-11 and the proposed SOPA, ACTA, and TPP legislation. If you care at all about the Internet and personal freedom, read this. In recent days there has been massive new interest in Canadian copyright reform as thousands of people write to their MPs to express concern about the prospect of adding SOPA-style rules to Bill C-11 (there are even plans for public protests beginning to emerge). The interest has resulted in somecompletely unacceptable threats and confusion – some claiming that the Canadian bill will be passed within… -
10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling
6 Feb 2012 | 9:53 amHere’s a page showing 10 words you need to stop misspelling (or in some cases, misusing) and funny ways to remember the correct word. -
Running FrameMaker 7 under Windows 7
6 Feb 2012 | 3:54 amFor whatever reason, there are still a fair number of writers out there using FrameMaker 7. However, FrameMaker 7 has compatibility issues with Windows 7. Silicon Prairie Software has a free patch that will allow FrameMaker 7 to run under Windows 7. This application uses a compatibility shim to control settings for the FrameMaker 7.x executable file. A compatibility shim provides more control over settings that allow the older version of Frame to work with Windows 7. I’ve used it for a few years, going back to the Windows Vista days. It fixes the incompatibilities with the built-in…
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Tech Writer News (Elephant)
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Resilience Tip - Statement Questions
19 Jan 2012 | 6:58 amEver notice how sometimes people ask a question when they really do not have a question? Recently I approached an office building where the gate at the entrance booth was open. I pulled up past the gate to the window where the guard was sitting, and opened my window to say where I was headed. The guard asked: “Why did you pull up past the gate?” I attempted to answer. However, as the guard repeated the question, I noticed a slightly annoyed and slightly frustrated feeling growing inside me.Read more... -
Translatable But Debatable - L'havdil
17 Jan 2012 | 4:20 pmI don’t find many dictionary definitions of להבדיל. Dov Ben Abba’s dictionary in Signet paperback says “not to be mentioned together,” which makes sense — or at least reasonable partial sense, since whenever we say להבדיל we are indeed mentioning things together, while simultaneously we point out that they are not to be compared except in the narrow sense that we intend. Read more... -
Translatable but Debatable - פירגון (Firgun)
17 Dec 2011 | 4:18 pmA contributor to “Better than English” writes that פירגון is “An act of saying nice things or doing nice things to another person without any other purpose, but to make the other feel good about what he is or what he does” but another contributor responds that “It can also be to share the credit with someone or not try to stab them in the back. Not to be jealous of someone’s accomplishments.”Read more... -
Resilience Tip - Confusion's Beauty
24 Nov 2011 | 3:31 am“I’m confused”, clients have said with a look of dismay. “Great!” I say. “That is the first step toward new thinking.” We humans use routine thinking for routine situations. We compartmentalize incoming data to help us manage the vast amounts of information coming our way. Hmm, seat, back, some legs – goes into our “chair” compartment of our thinking, and then we can move on to another thoughtRead more... -
Translatable But Debatable - געגועים
18 Nov 2011 | 8:03 amNostalgia may be wistfully reflective but is not painfully sad the way געגועים can be. Are we ever said to be nostalgic over people anyway? Times and places for sure, but individual people? I don’t know. Maybe public figures. Read more...
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The Humane Experience
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Not right does not mean wrong
25 Jan 2012 | 9:50 amI'm reading a really good document about risk analysis, and the author makes the point that when using probabilities to make predictions, at some point the future will unfold in a way that will make others perceive you were wrong. He emphasized "perceive" and that got me thinking. We do that a lot. Someone does their analysis, makes a decision, and then acts on it. Like a football coach that -
Think Aloud Is More than Talk Aloud
16 Jan 2012 | 11:58 amNielsen's current Alert Box reinforces that think-aloud is a great usability test tool. I couldn't agree more, but I'd like to add some in-the-trenches wisdom I learned from my first usability mentor, Loren Burke. There is a big difference between someone thinking out loud about the task they are doing and someone voicing their opinion about the design. The first is very valuable; the second, meh -
It ain't the walk, it's the talk.
20 Dec 2011 | 10:27 amI have a new column out today in UXmatters. It has to do with managing design tensions, but I talk a little in it about Action Science. During my doctoral research, in which I studied how development teams learn collectively during usability tests, I came across a field called Action Science, which analyzes dysfunctional communication with a focus on resolving contradictions between stated -
A Picture Is Worth...hmmmm
16 Nov 2011 | 7:26 amI think we use icons way too much! I'm working on a project right now where we are updating a web app and so I'm getting to talk to users and customers. One weakness that keeps coming up is that they can't figure out the icons. Not all of them, and that's been the important aha for me. Here's my new insight: Icons that differentiate among broad categories = good Icons that differentiate among -
A Most Unlikely Pub
11 Nov 2011 | 7:36 amOn Wednesday I went to the Irish Bred Pub in Rex, Georgia. Rex (now that I've been there, I feel as if I am on a first-name basis with the town) is a bit south of Atlanta, just off exit 2 on I-675. I went there to celebrate David Ellis's birthday and to hear his band, 3-Way Street, play. I've been in pubs all around Ireland and consider myself to know one when I see one. The one in Rex is,
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EServer TC Library: Recent Additions
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Tech Writer Tips and Tricks-DITA
22 Jan 2012 | 9:54 pmDarwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a sweeping revolution in technical writing and training. DITA introduces a different way of writing; a way that satisfies the ways users look for information and is therefore more usable. Additionally, authors work more efficiently by being able to easily single source and re-use content. The overall user experience is more consistent because format is completely separated from content (format is handled on publish only, not by the authors). Consider carefully, and if you choose to make the switch to DITA, it’s already time to start planning. -
Taking Advantage of Social Media Part I: The Media Are the Message
22 Jan 2012 | 2:24 pmIf you’re a technical communicator desperately trying to find some peace and quiet amidst a rowdy cubicle farm, it may seem hard to understand why anyone would want to become more social. In this article, I’ll describe some of the currently popular technologies that support social networking. In the next installment (in about 2 months), I’ll show how you can take advantage of these technologies to communicate more effectively with an audience by embracing socialism. Hart, Geoffrey J.S. -
Taking Advantage of Social Media Part II: The Media Aren't the Message
22 Jan 2012 | 2:24 pmWhatever a social medium’s idiosyncrasies, what distinguishes it from traditional communication methods is that it restores the human touch by permitting or even insisting on dialogue. At a minimum, this makes the reading more diverse and interesting, as in blogs that painlessly mingle technical content (upcoming webinars, solutions to technical problems) with insights into the blogger’s life. At the other extreme, social media represent a revolutionary way for readers to work with us to create meaning. To borrow a phrase that is fast-becoming cliché, that changes everything. Hart,… -
E-Book Formats
22 Jan 2012 | 2:22 pmMost technical writers understand online help formats and have worked with at least one over the years. Help file format have evolved from man pages (manual pages in UNIX in the early 1970’s) and HLP files through CHM files and the plethora of HTML-based formats that we have now. E-Book formats are similar in many respects to the common online help formats, but with one crucial difference; they’re designed to work on the small screens of today’s e-readers and tablets. Soltys, Keith -
New Communications Cycle: Content Consumption is a Two-Way Street
20 Jan 2012 | 3:48 pmThe impact of social media on how technical communicators do their job extends beyond the frequently discussed “you need to be on Facebook” conversation. The communications cycle relies on determining the what, how, and when of communications in a strategic way… and that much hasn’t changed. Giordano, Connie
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Shanghai Tech Writer
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Combining the Power of Google and National Instruments
12 Jan 2012 | 7:28 pmCombining the Power of Google and National Instruments is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer I’ve had the privilege of working for two great companies — National Instruments (2007-2009) and now, Google (2009-present). What happens when you combine both companies’ products together and create a new product? Check out this awesome Guinness World Record-breaking robot built using Lego Mindstorm NXT (programmed using NI’s LabVIEW) and Samsung Galaxy S II (powered by Google’s Android). This ARM-powered, Lego-constructed CubeStormer II has set a Guiness… -
Google’s New WebGL Bookcase
18 Oct 2011 | 8:59 pmGoogle’s New WebGL Bookcase is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Google came up with an awesome way to represent digital books online, using WebGL. WebGL Bookcase is an experimental interface for the Google Books API. The interface is a circular digital bookshelf. You pick a subject and scroll through the book titles. To view a book, just click it, and a 3D-looking book comes to the foreground, enabling you to flip through the pages and even click to buy or download. Check it out! Chrome Expirment – WebGL Bookcase (If you’re in China, you’ll need VPN to view the… -
Chinese Robots Can Play Ping Pong
17 Oct 2011 | 8:36 pmChinese Robots Can Play Ping Pong is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Check out this YouTube video of a robot playing ping pong in China. If robots can play ping pong, imagine what they can do in another 5 or 10 years (especially if you add A.I. like Siri)! (If you’re in China, you’ll need VPN to see the embedded video. Here’s the actual video link.) Share and Enjoy: Related Articles:Google Voice Finally Sends Out Invites! (0)Combining the Power of Google and National Instruments (0)Google’s New WebGL Bookcase (1)The Amazing Google Body (0)The Magic Goop Scoop (0)A… -
Watch Out for Scams Targeting Foreigners in China
30 Sep 2011 | 3:46 pmWatch Out for Scams Targeting Foreigners in China is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Useful information regarding various scams targeting foreigners living in China. Some of them are quite funny and/or crazy! The American Citizen Services (ACS) unit is regularly contacted by Americans victimized by scams that take advantage of their generosity or ignorance of local norms and culture. While petty theft remains the most prevalent type of crime Westerners encounter in China, the diversity and sophistication of scams is increasing. While the following list is not meant to be… -
Documentation Writer Job Opening at Google NY
6 Sep 2011 | 2:17 pmDocumentation Writer Job Opening at Google NY is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer The area: Engineering Simply put, Google engineers make computers do amazing things. Populated by extraordinarily creative, motivated and talented people, our Engineering team gets excited by developing new applications that really make a difference and are used by millions of people. We’re driven by Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. If you seek to tackle such challenges as building a highly scalable computing infrastructure,…
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Freelance Technical Writing Services | Web Writing Services
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Obi-Wan Kenobi: Content Writer for the Dark Side [Good Design #7]
30 Jan 2012 | 8:52 amObi-Wan Kenobi is a big fat liar. As much as he might try to spin the story in his favor, he still told a bald-faced lie. And we all know it. Obi-Wan: Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Tell that to your next disgruntled customer. In our social media-driven economy, honesty is the big commodity. Being authentic, being trustworthy—it’s just how good business is done today. And your customers are highly attuned to cues that you can’t be trusted, whether it’s based on “a certain point of view” or simply not… -
Internet Marketing Start to Finish: A Review
23 Jan 2012 | 9:04 amGot a website? Of course you do. Got an effective marketing strategy for it? You’re not alone. It’s becoming increasingly critical for businesses to invest in online marketing, but online marketing is also growing more complex. Small and medium size businesses are under great pressure to beef up their Internet marketing efforts, but often they don’t have the resources or the expertise to handle such an enormous challenge. Internet Marketing Start to Finish, by Catherine Juon, Dunrie Greiling, and Catherine Buerkle, aims to provide some relief. Designed to outline “a breakthrough… -
Hey Content, Don’t Be That Guy [Good Design #6]
20 Jan 2012 | 9:01 amPhoto credit: Carrington Vanston You know how there’s always That Guy at the party? He’s the guy without a sense of personal space who keeps butting into other people’s conversations and derailing them with slightly inappropriate stories and way too much personal information. Well, I hate to break it to you, but your content may be That Guy. We want our content to get noticed, but it shouldn’t ever butt in where it doesn’t belong. Do we have a good understanding of where our content doesn’t belong? No one likes the guy at the party who keeps butting into other people’s… -
Air Guitars and Keeping Loyal Customers [Good Design #5]
2 Jan 2012 | 9:31 amMy dad got an Air Guitar for Christmas this year. Yes, an Air Guitar. It’s a plastic toy shaped like the head and neck of a guitar, with a laser that senses your arm’s motion through the air. When you pass your hand in front of the laser, the toy plays a sound that resembles a chord (sort of). A cheap thrill, but my dad was amused with it. He had fun with this Air Guitar, but the instructions were nearly indecipherable. The content itself wasn’t bad (although it really wasn’t good, either). In fact, although the content itself was pretty clear, it took great effort to undertstand the… -
Serious About Marketing? Better Be Serious About User Guides Too
16 Dec 2011 | 9:48 amScott Abel, The Content Wrangler, posted a terrific article this week that got a lot of attention from the technical communications community. Looking ahead to 2012, he poses several challenges to the tech comm industry. One challenge in particular strikes at every small business that’s serious about reaching customers. Scott says: When organizations showcase their technical communication products on the web, in the way that Autodesk and ExactTarget do today, they experience many benefits, including deep knowledge about their customers that allow them to make valuable incremental…
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Kai's Tech Writing Blog
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Half-way DITA: Why some is better than none
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf DITA seems like a good idea, but you cannot make the case for it, you can move towards structured writing and make your documentation “future-proof” by meeting the standard half-way. At the company I work for, we tech writers created manuals in parallel, but separate to online help. Over time, this gave us a documentation set that was inconsistent in places and hard to maintain to boot. Topic-based authoring which reuses topics in print and online can fix that, of course. First, a documentation standard Deciding on the method is one thing, but we also wanted a consistent… -
Kai’s Tech Writing Blog is 2 years old!
30 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amKai’s Tech Writing Blog is 2 years old now – and it’s pretty amazing to me…! When I started blogging, I had no idea what it means to write publicly and (sort of) regularly about tech comm. And it’s been great, mainly thanks to you, my readers and followers: 148 posts have made it worthwhile, because I know each one was read, many were tweeted about and commented on. 280 comments from you have been a great help in becoming a better writer. Thanks for reading and commenting and generally being a great diverse community. I’m glad and proud to be part of… -
Short-sighted seduction: Tech comm as a task
23 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amTreating tech comm as a task, not a profession, is seductive, but harmful. This is the story of how a seemingly sensible management decision about documentation has inflicted avoidable damage on a product. Read how the idea that “anybody can write” can backfire. Best intentions Imagine a software company. They decide to revamp one of their products. It’s gotten a little long in the tooth and deserves a renovation. Requirements and designs are written, modules are developed and tested. Documentation was previously understaffed, but that wasn’t a severe problem. The… -
On being a tech comm influencer
16 Jan 2012 | 2:00 amMindTouch’s list of The 400 Most Influential in #Techcomm and #ContentStrategy does a great job of invigorating our profession, but has a few problems as well. [This blog post is victim to my regular blogging schedule: It was written before, but published after David Farbey's more elaborate post where all the action is in the comments and Aaron from MindTouch replies to some of the issues with the list!] Here’s my play-by-play recap of my various reactions to the list: Hope — “Did I make the top 50?” Marvel — “Wow, look at the people at the top,… -
Beef up tech comm skills with free webinars
11 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amIf one of your new year’s resolutions has been to improve your tech comm skills, here’s your chance. Industry experts offer several webinars in upcoming weeks to start you off. Many of them are free, so you really have no excuse! Scriptorium Scriptorium’s free webinars cover industry trends and technologies, such as: Content strategy in technical communication Trends in technical communication, 2012 HTML5 and its impact on technical communication I’ve attended many Scriptorium webinars and have learned a lot from them. They are substantial and presented well. If…
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Content Evangelist
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Improving Knowledge Retention in eLearning
19 Jan 2012 | 9:47 amImproving Knowledge Retention in eLearning A kind gnome pass this knowledge retention link to me (yeah, Ima gonna pay for that gnome comment! It’s worth a full read but the highlights on how we can use those retention ideas to improve our eLearning courses are: Say it Again if You Want Me To Remember! Repetition and Retention Studies show that adaptive repetition aids in knowledge retention. The gist of it is: Pretest – what do I already know? Adaptive Learning presentation – Show me only the gaps in my knowledge Test – What do I know now? Repeat step 2 –… -
Demonstrating the power of EPUB3 for Interactive Elearning
4 Jan 2012 | 3:03 pmYou’ll have to download the ereader, then grab the EPUB3 Unleashed ebook. It’s worth clicking through the whole demo, as it shows a lot of options that become available in epub3. What’s exciting from an elearning and interactive enhanced ebook perspective includes: text-linked audio animation interaction quizzes (True/false, sequencing, multiple choice, drag and drop, etc). Will be great to see some of this functionality showing up in digital content to move us all beyond the print-based econtent we have available today. -
New Survey Results on ebooks from Aptara
20 Dec 2011 | 2:29 pmAptara came out with survey results on the State of Epubs around the publishing world. If you don’t have time for the full pdf survey results, take a look at this short infographic that covers the basics on ebook adoption. While this is focused on all book publishers, there’s some interesting takeaways for elearning and techcomm professionals: ebooks are on the rise across all industries Enhanced ebooks will change the paradigm of what it means to be a ‘book’ – i.e. we’ll move away from the print-to-digital conversion, and create new user… -
Another Interesting Take on the Mobile User (and content assumptions)
7 Nov 2011 | 5:21 pmFrom Myths of the Mobile Context , Mobile users: Expect as good an experience as the desktop May be looking for that quick snippet, but many times are looking for the full content. Plan accordingly. Don’t randomly remove content – keep the core content available on Mobile (tho need to reconsider navigation etc for smaller screen). Extra clicks to get to content is okay, so long as it is leading to the right direction. Make decisions obvious. Serve the same content to all devices, but optimize experience for the device capabilities Apply Minimalist principles to ALL your content. -
Mobile First as a Content Strategy
2 Nov 2011 | 7:48 amThis is is being presented at this year’s DevLearn 2011 conference: Content Strategy Across Connected Devices Interesting highlights: Content developers’ goal – create an engaging educational experience for screens that are convenient, not simply converting existing content to smaller screens. Converting existing elearning content to mobile format is a lesson in futility. Design training content for mobile first, not desktop or print. Content development should become Agile – continuous experimentation and improvement. Design upfront what your smallest content…
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More Specifically
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Know Your Limitations
3 Feb 2012 | 8:17 amHaving always worked full time, I had specific hours I had to work and a boss checking in on my projects to make sure I am on task. Freelancing gives me the freedom to work on my own time. Freelancing part time always gave me the ability to pick my projects and I could always choose to turn something down if I did not have time for it or just did not feel like the project fit my skills. Since I am transitioning, I have that fear that many beginner freelancers have that I won’t get enough clients or make my bills because of lack of work. This fear has pushed me to take on every project… -
Transitioning
27 Jan 2012 | 1:13 pmMany life changing events (both professional and personal) have been occurring and I apologize for not being more regular in my blog. Professionally, I will be officially making the transition from full time to freelance. There had been some back and forth because the company I work for wants to keep me as a contractor, but it is a small company and there were many loopholes to work though. Now it is official. Transition is sometimes the most difficult part. I am currently still working full time and freelancing at night. I have a few terrific clients I am working with right now and having a… -
The Art of Negotiation: What You Need to Get the Gig
18 Jan 2012 | 12:40 pmThis past year, I have been moonlighting as a freelance editor/writer while still maintaining a full time job. This paycheck security meant that I could take or leave projects with no real financial burden. This means I slacked a bit when it came to 1.) Looking for new clients and 2.) Securing the contract. As I transition now into full time freelance, I do find myself with more anxiety when it comes to finding enough work to cover the bills. Every freelancer goes through this phase as they are first starting out to make their brand known. The safety net is being pulled out and now I better… -
Sprints: Freelancing with a Baby or Toddler Around
12 Jan 2012 | 7:44 amKatharine O’Moore-Klopf, ELS, a board-certified editor in the life sciences, has been self-employed since 1995. She has helped researchers in more than 20 nations get their articles published in more than 35 US and UK biomedical journals by removing language barriers. On Twitter, where she networked her way into coauthoring a book, Katharine’s handle is @KOKEdit. Learn more about her at http://www.kokedit.com. One of the best techniques for dealing with seemingly daunting projects is to break them down into a series of small tasks. When I went freelance full time at the start of 1995 just… -
Guest Post: Tips For The Work At Home Freelancer
4 Jan 2012 | 8:37 amBio: Louise Harnby is a UK-based professional proofreader with 21 years’ experience in the publishing industry. Freelance since 2006, she is also a mother, a wife, and a Labrador owner. Web address: www.louiseharnbyproofreading.weebly.com I became a freelance proofreader in 2006 when my daughter was two years old. I’d worked ‘in-house’ for a couple of publishing companies for 13 years prior to giving birth. Holding my tiny child in my arms, I realized that the concept of working ‘in-house’ was going to take on an entirely different meaning if I was going to earn some money and…
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I Came, I Saw, I Learned...
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Adobe Captivate: A Clean Break from PowerPoint
8 Feb 2012 | 8:41 amby Kevin Siegel Many Captivate projects begin in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you've never tried to import a PowerPoint presentation, you'll find it an easy process. All you have to do is choose From Microsoft PowerPoint (located at the right of the Welcome screen). After opening the PowerPoint presentation, you will be presented with a dialog that will allow you to control, among other things, the size of the presentation when it is converted to a Captivate project.At the bottom of the dialog box, you will find an innocent-looking check box next to Linked. If you leave this… -
Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Document Properties
6 Feb 2012 | 3:22 pmby Barb Binder It's easy to ignore the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat. You may never even think about it as you create, enhance and review your PDFs. But if you start amassing a large collection of PDFs, ignoring the Description tab would be a mistake. The Description fields are easily searched (both locally and online) and taking a few minutes to fill them out as you go will save you the headache of realizing a few years down the road that you should have been doing it all along. My personal rule is to make sure I get those fields filled… -
eLearning: Discover Your Learner's Thinking Style
2 Feb 2012 | 10:27 amby AJ George Do you wish you could get inside the head of your learners and know exactly how their thought processes work? Me too, but we can't all be Professor Xavier.Learning assessments provider Pearson TalentLens has managed to make a bit of self-examination possible at least. They have created the My Thinking Styles assessment to help people explore their unique thinking styles. The two part online assessment is free, takes only minutes to complete, and provides a basic report of the participant's thinking styles.The service is not perfect. The end report focuses mainly… -
PowerPoint & Articulate Studio: Resolve Performance Issues
1 Feb 2012 | 2:13 pmby AJ George While working with a PowerPoint developer this week I learned that she was experiencing performance issues while using PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter.I looked into her issues and found that it's a bad idea to work from a network or USB drive. In fact, it appears that doing so can cause crashes. The Articulate web site suggests that developers ensure that all associated files (presentations, audio, quizzes, etc) are on the C drive or local hard drive.If you are sure you are working locally but are still seeing performance issues, try running a repair on Articulate… -
Adobe Captivate: Sometimes Manual Labor is the Best Kind of Labor
31 Jan 2012 | 10:30 amby Kevin Siegel During the recording process, Captivate typically does a wonderful job of creating screen captures on processes you perform within an application. I said "typically" because there are occasions when Captivate fails to create some of the screen captures and you are left in a bit of a pickle. You won't know Captivate missed an important screen capture until you stop the recording process and begin producing the lesson in Captivate. By then, the missing screen(s) may require you to record additional slides.Assuming you are using…
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Chicwriter
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10 Newest Things in Blogging for 2012
24 Jan 2012 | 8:21 amThis is a guest post by Kathleen Hubert. Oh! snap, its 2012 already! Are you ready for a new year of blogging trends? In the last few years we’ve dealt with everything from web 2.0 to crazy innovations in car loans and insurance (who doesn’t love all of the crazy Progressive commercials?), but that was [...] -
Writers & Bloggers, Learn About the SOPA and PIPA and Why to Protest It
17 Jan 2012 | 10:38 pmSOPA Infographic: The Internet Blacklist Bill View more documents from Fight for the Future Via: Business Insurance Blog PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. [View the story "SOPA/PIPA Protests" on Storify] Source: thisisnthappiness.com via Ben on Pinterest -
Five Areas in 2012 That Technical Writers Need to Know
4 Jan 2012 | 1:14 pmThis is also true of systems that businesses and government agencies use. The systems were not as robust, and a lot of them have been (or will be) updated to keep up with the demands of today. With this, also comes the documentation that tells the beginning, middle, and end of these systems. This is from the project planning, requirements gathering and analysis, and the end-user documents. Due to the close tie-in between documentation and systems, technical writing has also evolved alongside technology. -
Happy Holidays and New Year’s Everyone!
21 Dec 2011 | 9:00 amAnother free picture slideshow by Smilebox I want to wish everyone a happy holidays. I’ve been pretty busy working on different projects and getting ready for Christmas. After this hectic two weeks, I will be back with more material. Source: kraftykym.blogspot.com via kym on Pinterest -
5 New Year’s Resolutions for Writers
12 Dec 2011 | 9:37 pmThe New Year is right around the corner and as you gear up to bid farewell to 2011, you’re ready to pop champagne, countdown with friends and you’ve even got a special someone lined up who you plan on sharing a kiss with at the stroke of midnight…but wait—do you know what your New Year’s resolutions are for 2012? Well if not and you just happen to be a writing enthusiast, be sure to check out the following resolutions that will make for a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year as a writer.
