I'd Rather Be Writing

The 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 … more »

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 … more »

I’m giving an STC webinar this week on designing quick reference guides. Here are the details: Designing Quick Reference Guides Date: Wednesday, 25 January | 1:00–2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) Condensing a manual into an attractive quick reference guide requires a poet’s precision with language, but it also requires you to exercise skill with visual design and page layout. These short guides blend marketing with instruction, … more »

The following is a guest post by Michelle Tompkins. Earlier this year she asked me to post a survey about technical communication and blogging. I posted it here, and then asked if she would follow up to share her findings. This guest post shares her findings. Earlier in December, Tom Johnson was nice enough to help me with my graduate research on how blogs are … more »

We had a couple of writing interns join our group this month. To track writing assignments for the technology blog, I’ve been using JIRA. JIRA is a bug tracking tool from Atlassian (the same company that makes Confluence). It’s typically used by software teams to track bugs during software development projects. You can add comments to items, assign items to team members, assign the items … more »

This past week I traveled to Florida to help clear out my dad’s house. He recently fell and hit his head, and now he’s in a rehabilitation center while his memory recovers. It may take him months to return to his normal self. When he does, we want him to live closer to my sister in Tampa. I spent an entire day clearing out his … more »

I walked into Home Depot the other day and, seeing a clerk near the entry way, asked where the storage boxes were. Immediately the clerk told me. After I found my boxes, I asked another clerk where the gloves and Sharpee markers were. Again, she gave the answer immediately. In my experience, apart from wandering aimlessly around the store for extended periods of time, this … more »

One of the findability features in our help systems that we often overlook is the breadcrumb. Breadcrumbs typically sit above the page title and highlight the hierarchical path that leads to where you are. Here’s a screenshot of a typical breadcrumb, taken from Adobe Illustrator’s help: Greg Nudelman discusses breadcrumbs in one of his chapters in Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success. This post … more »

This past year I learned a few things. As I approach 2012, I’d like to note what 2011 taught me: Writing documentation in a wiki suits me for the same reasons I enjoy interacting on the web. The web is interactive, alive, dynamic, collaborative, fresh, and unlimited in potential. A wiki, being online, allows me to partake in the same game-like, community-rich environment that I … more »

The following is a guest post by Hezy Asher, a technical writer at Quest Software Israel. VITO CORLEONE: I want you to use all your powers. And all your skills. I don’t want his mother to see him this way. [Removes blanket revealing Sonny's mangled face.] VITO CORLEONE: Look how they massacred my boy. I was barely 14 years old when I saw Godfather I … more »

I recently read Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web (2008), by Gene Smith. Smith dives into tagging as a method for adding metadata to resources, which in turn increases the organization and findability of the resources. Traditional help authoring tools categorize resources through folders (a carryover from Windows folders), whereas web platforms typically use tags. Tags are actually a quick and easy way to attach metadata … more »

Students and others trying to break into technical writing are always wondering what tools they should use. The latest tools survey from WritersUA seems helpful in answering this question. The survey concludes that some of the most popular tools for technical writers are Adobe Acrobat, Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Dreamweaver, Madcap Flare, Framemaker, Photoshop, Robohelp, Snagit, and Visio. Of these tools, Flare scores highest as … more »

In Scrum and the Single Writer, Kathee Kuvinka mentions Kanban as a technique implemented in her agile-based company to keep the workload under control. Kathee writes, Kanban is a lean, or just-in-time methodology which is often used in manufacturing for inventory control and, like many good methodologies (including Scrum), originated in Japan. The philosophy is that you should only take on as much work as … more »

Apparently the Matrix was somewhat prophetic in showing us the future of learning. The idea that you can download knowledge is becoming more of a reality. According to Fox News: Scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, have used a functional magnetic resonance machine (fMRI) to decode the process of learning. The procedure – known as Decoded Neurofeedback or “DecNef” – stimulates … more »

Mark Baker’s post, Why documentation analytics may misread, presents an appealing argument about why it doesn’t matter if just a few people read the manual. In his post, Mark argues that a small number of key influencers who read the manual can share the knowledge with a much larger group who do not read the manual. The effect of the manual, therefore, disseminates out to … more »