I'd Rather Be Writing

I recently attended Confab in Minneapolis. I was one of about 5 technical writers among the 650 attendees, which is why I found it surprising to hear Kristina Halverson say, We can learn a lot from tech comm. Let me repeat that. We can learn a lot from tech comm. I felt pleased to hear this shout-out to my profession, and then tried to unpack exactly … more »

The STC Summit takes place in a few days. If you monitor the #stc12 twitter stream, you can feel the excitement of the conference attendees. I’ve been to at least a dozen conferences over the last seven years or so, and I’ve accumulated a few tips that have helped make my conference experience better. Here are my top 15 tips for a successful conference experience. … more »

Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, published in 2011, is a story about a pharmaceutical researcher’s attempt to make sense of her lost colleague, presumably dead in the Amazon, while wrestling with a domineering academic professor who refuses to communicate updates about her research. The book begins at a slow pace but, as Janet Maslin notes in her New York Times review, the story catches fire … more »

I received the following question from a reader: I’m a 20 year old college student and I just finished up my first year at a local community college and I was wondering what my major should be if I want to become a technical writer when I eventually graduate. Right now my counselors have me majoring in General Science (b/c my dream job would be … more »

It’s interesting how new things sometimes sneak up on us. I’m 36 years old, which means I’m past my exploratory twenties. It fascinates me how I’ll be perfectly content in one way of life and then suddenly find another. My wife, Shannon, seems to follow the same path as well at times. About six months ago, she discovered yoga. Shannon has never been so fully … more »

Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson, is a fantasy trilogy that takes you into a world where the characters can “burn” metals inside their bodies to give rise to certain powers, such as increased strength, the ability to push and pull other metals, an enhancement of the senses, or the most potent of all, the ability to see several seconds into the future (critical for fighting). Mistings … more »

I’ve been reading Sarah Maddox’s new book, Confluence, Tech Comm, Chocolate, and have been impressed. I enjoy the energy and speed in Sarah’s writing. If you’ve read her blog before, her book has the same tone. This is not a book review, because I’m not yet finished with the book. But it doesn’t take too many pages to come to some realizations worth noting. My … more »

This week, as I was riding my bike to work and listening to Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World (a classic fantasy/adventure book), one of the characters — was it Bayle Domon, the pirate? for the life of me, I can’t remember, nor can I find it, but he says something like this to Rand, one of the protagonists: Sometimes … more »

At work I have often grumbled about the fact that we have both a blog and a wiki, and that content shared between them sometimes seems redundant and unnecessary. However, I have since come to realize how well blogs and wikis fit together. I think it makes sense to have both — at least in my authoring scenario. In short, wikis are suited for information … more »

The 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s Principle, states that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. Applied to help authoring, this could mean that from 100 help topics you write, about 20 of the topics will be viewed 80 percent of the time. Designers recognize the applicability of the 80/20 rule on design. Heat maps show that people only focus on … more »

I admit that I am developing a love affair with grapefruit. Don’t get me wrong — I love many types of fruit. But there’s something particularly special about the grapefruit, particularly ruby red grapefruit. Looking at the following image, can anyone really blame me? I’m not sure if I can even pinpoint exactly why I like grapefruit so much. First of all, it’s a fruit … more »

The following is a guest post by Neal Kaplan, a technical writer at Zuora, Inc. Another post about wikis? Why not! Wikis are great! Just to set the stage, I’ve been a technical writer for a while now, working for software companies in Silicon Valley. (In fact, I often forget that there are technical writers who don’t document software.) I’ve worked at large companies, where … more »

A couple of years ago, I wanted to try biking to work and made an initial trial with a hybrid cruiser bike that ended up consuming way too much time (about 2 hrs each way). I gave up on the idea, and then winter came and no one bikes to work during winter in Utah. A few months ago, however, I went to Florida to … more »

One of the challenges with wikis (or at least with Mediawiki) is figuring out how to title pages that all belong to the same product or group. I spent a bit of time researching best practices with this and didn’t come up with a clear answer. I tried to also figure out why I’d never come across this page titling conundrum before. Here’s the problem. … more »

The following is a guest post by Mick Davidson, a technical writer with 20 years of professional writing experience. Before I get started I’d like to thank Tom for giving me this opportunity to bang on about why I think wikis are the future for technical documentation. Like many writers, up to a few years ago I was plodding around using backwoods technology, stuck with … more »