Last week one of my followers tweeted, “Again, I find myself disagreeing, to a degree, with @tomjohnson.” It was actually a retweet, so someone else was agreeing that they also disagreed with me. I know my posts on content strategy had a lot of people disagreeing. First I said content strategy should focus on why help fails. Then I followed that up to say much … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 50 min. This is a presentation I gave at BYU Idaho last week to students interested in entering professional writing. For the accompanying slides, see this post. For the overall question I was trying to tackle, see Students Contemplate Whether a Technical Writing Career Will Be Fulfilling.

While on my trip to BYU Idaho last week, I had an epiphany about why tech comm will always be the career path of last resort for students. As you recall, one of my desires was to open students up to the possibility of a career in tech comm, not as a sellout/fallback career, or a career of last resort, but one that they would … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 View PowerPoint Length: 1 hour 45 min. Over the last month, you’ve been seeing various posts on my site about the seven deadly sins of blogging (being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive). I mentioned at the beginning of my seven deadly sins series that I was preparing for some upcoming presentations on blogging. … more »

Being boring is sin #3 in my list of the seven deadly sins (other sins include being fake, irrelevant, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive). Perhaps a more tactful way of saying something is boring is to say the writer neglects to “keep the audience’s attention.” I’m always hearing about the short attention spans of online audiences, that readers only skim your content and spend a minute … more »

In previous posts, I’ve explored whether technical writing is boring. Penelope Trunk’s latest post, All advice on how to manage creative people is awful, made me see the topic of workplace boredom in a different light. Citing research in sociology, Penelope explains that “people who work are happier than people who don’t because people who are employed spend more of their time being creative.” Creativity, then, … more »

When I talk to most technical writers, video is a format they haven’t done much with. This surprises me, because I find that, as a user, video tutorials are often the most helpful type of material for me to learn software. Video most closely simulates the universal desire we have for a friend to show us how to do something in an application. Perhaps I’m … more »

The other night Jane and I saw Twilight. It wasn’t my first choice, but it’s not bad, especially for a vampire movie. Actually, Edward Cullen’s phrase, “You’re like my own personal brand of heroin,” which he uses to describe Bella (who isn’t a vampire), stuck in my mind. Here’s the scene:

Last week I drove up at Rexburg, Idaho to give a presentation on technical writing to the English majors at Brigham Young University Idaho (BYU-I) as part of their annual Pre-Professional Writing Conference. Most of the students in the group intend to pursue a literary career, such as writing books, editing manuscripts in publishing houses, or teaching literature in college or high school. I was … more »

A Little Less Conversation Cartoon | Savage Chickens – Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage

As college students contemplate careers in technical writing, they often hesitate because of negative stereotypes about the profession. As with many stereotypes, these aspects of technical writing can describe some situations for some people, but as a whole they aren’t necessarily true. I’ve listed Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes — tell me if the stereotypes hold generally true for you or not. You can take the … more »

Tonight I participated on a career panel for technical writing majors at Utah State University. In preparation, I tried to think of answers to questions they might ask. The one question that I was sure some student would ask is this: If you were to do it over again, would you choose technical writing as your career? I started reading through some back posts on … more »

I’ve been rethinking a previous post I wrote about the best response to the remark, “Nobody reads the help anyway. ” A better response is to ask people (at just the right time) to raise their hands if they’ve ever searched a help file. Unless someone is totally unique, most likely everyone has tried using help. When everyone has his or her hand raised to … more »

After a five-month hiatus, Aaron and Scott at DMN Communications returned to the podcasting scene. In this Sep 9 podcast, they discuss whether technical writing is calling or just a job? By calling, they refer to treating tech writing as if you were destined to be a tech writer, as if it was a sacred duty you were compelled by almost a higher power to … more »