Technical Writing Careers -- Answering 13 Questions about Technical Writing Jobs

Technical writing careers are often a mystery to those on the outside. What do technical writing jobs involve? What is the industry like? What is the career path of a technical writer, and what challenges do technical writers face? Carmen, a student in a technical management program, found me by searching for "technical writers" on Yahoo.com. Fulfilling an assignment in a Career Development course to contact someone working in the technic...

Top 10 Workspace Configurations for Technical Writers

Here's my list of the Top 10 Workspace Configurations for technical writers. (By "workspace configuration," I mean the characteristics of your work environment that make you most productive and happy.) Dual Monitors. Allows you to put the application you're documenting on one screen, your authoring tool on the other. No more scrunched windows or frustrations with constantly maximizing and minimizing your screens. Laptop with docking stat...

Free Doc Train Ticket ($899) for Your Response to a Question About Innovation

In May I'll be participating on a Documentation and Training West panel in a session called Meet the Bloggers. As a presenter, Scott Abel has given me a free guest ticket to the conference to give to one of my friends. I've decided to give the ticket away to one of my readers by way of a little contest. (In case you're wondering, Scott gave me permission to do this.) To enter the contest, just leave a reply to the contest question below e...

Survey Results: How I'm Changing My Blog Based on Your Responses

Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent survey. Seventy four people participated -- this is roughly 9% of my readers. You can view the survey results here, including all kinds of colorful graphs, such as the one below. Results Summary Here's a summary of the survey results: 79% of you work in the field of technical communication, with another 4% who want to break in, and about 3% who want to transition out. About 50% of you rea...

Jing Screencast: Getting Up and Running with Jing

In this Jing video tutorial, I explain how to get up and running with Jing. What's Jing? Check out my previous post that includes several sample Jing videos showing how technical writers can benefit from Jing. You can also see the [Flash no longer supported] Note: If you're seeing some bracketed text and a link rather than a video player, it's because the flash-embed plugin I'm using to embed the Camtasia video into the site is no longe...

Are Gerunds in Topic Titles Problematic in Search Results?

I've been accustomed to writing topic titles as gerunds (for example, "Configuring the Monitor Display" or "Reformatting Your Hard Drive"), followed by specific steps that would begin, "To configure the monitor display...," or "To reformat your hard drive...." However, when I watched how an actual person used my online help file, I noticed he didn't use gerunds in his searches. He typed his search like this: configure monitor display, or ...

How Jing Can Benefit Technical Writers

Jing, a new project by TechSmith, is a tool that allows you to quickly capture video or an image from your computer and share it with others, such as project team members or customers. After you capture images or video with Jing, you click a Share button to quickly upload the capture to a web host, file directory (e.g., SharePoint), or Flickr. Within seconds Jing gives you a URL to share with others. Jing is a cool, easy-to-use tool, and ...

Will you take my short survey?

I made a short survey to get a better understanding about you, the readers/listeners of my blog and podcast. If you can spare a second, will you take my survey? Thanks. Take the Survey (If the button doesn't work for you, click click here).

Answering Questions on the "Practicalities of Blogging"

Kevin on the TECHWR-L listserv asked a lot of questions on the "practicalities of blogging." I thought I would respond here in a post rather than on the listserv, because so many people outside of techwr-l have the same questions. Kevin asks, Let's say that I wanted to finally start a blog (it seems de rigeur for techwriters (and many others) to have a website and at least one blog indicated on their business cards, resumes, etc.) ... I ...

A Web 2.0 Documentation Idea Gone Wrong

Many of us want to integrate innovative Web 2.0 practices into our online help. But if we create blogs, wikis, or other interactive features outside the help file, users may never use them. I've been using SharePoint 2007 as a file repository for my online help mainly because of the publishing control it gives me. And since I was already using SharePoint as my file repository, I thought I could also take advantage of another feature — Sh...

I wish all companies provided tech support like this

TechSmith (the creators of Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, and other tools) has the best free tech support I've ever seen. I submitted a question yesterday about reducing file size in Camtasia Studio, and today I received a screencast reply from one of the TechSmith staff. He wrote, Thanks! Here's a few answers to your questions: http://screencast.com/t/QNIh41u4 I was blown away by the screencast reply. I bet the time it takes to create a short...

Blogger Compiles Extensive Examples of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Someone sent this link to me today: a blog of unnecessary quotation marks. Keep your eye out for any more sightings and send pictures to the author. Of all grammar errors, unnecessary quotation marks are one of the funnest and most playful, as they can change or obscure meanings in hilarious ways.

Interview with STC President Linda Oestreich: Directions the STC Is Heading

Listen here: In this podcast, STC President Linda Oestreich talks about the direction that the Society for Technical Communication is heading. She explains the strategic objectives of the STC and the ways the Board is trying to meet those objectives in a financially conscious way. She provides updates on other initiatives they've pursued, such as certification programs, increased recognition, and membership trends. Linda...

Notes from My First WordPress Meetup

I attended my first WordPress meetup yesterday. Here's a 20-second video that Brad Baldwin of Rocky Mountain Voices took at the event. My wife and I appear at the very end, engaged in conversation with a couple of seasoned bloggers who make their living from a quotations page that gets 200,000 hits a day. (By the way, I found this video on Janet Meiners' site (aka Newspaper Girl), who wrote an excellent post about the event.) ...

Camtasia Versus Captivate: Thinking About Screen Real Estate Problems in Video Captures

The two leading screencast tools, Camtasia and Captivate, both have strengths and weaknesses that make selecting a clear winner difficult if not impossible. But lately I've been using both of these tools and have been particularly impressed by Camtasia's zoom-and-pan feature. The new zoom-and-pan feature in Camtasia is, without argument, the most exciting feature in Camtasia. The zoom-and-pan feature allows you to easily zoom in or pan to...