Letting Go of the Words (2007), by Ginny Redish, puts forward an idea that many readers will eagerly embrace: think of writing as you would a conversation. Anticipate the reader’s questions as you craft your content. Redish explains, If you think of the web as conversation, you’ll realize that much of your content is meant to answer the questions that people come with. you do … more »

Recently Will Sansbury and I gave a webinar to STC community leaders on chapter and SIG websites. Rather than giving a static, one-way presentation about theoretical concepts with web design, or boring people with technical details they probably didn’t care about, we held the webinar more like a design review workshop, not too different from a writing group workshop. Although I spent three years in … more »

The seventh and final sin in my ongoing Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging series is being inattentive. (Other sins include being fake, irrelevant boring, unreadable, irresponsible, and unfindable.) One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture. Make Commenting Easy In the Blog Herald, Valorie Maltoni says, In … more »

Google recently released Sidewiki, a new feature in the Google toolbar that allows you to add comments in a pop-out sidebar that appears beside every page on the web. It’s not a typical wiki — you can’t edit what other people write. You can only add another comment about the page.

In a recent User Interface Engineering Brainsparks podcast, Jared Spool interviews Ginny Redish about her book, [amazon-product type="text" text="Letting Go of the Words: Writing as Conversation"]0123694868[/amazon-product], as it applies to interface design. This podcast was one of the best I’ve listened to all week. In the podcast, Ginny explains how your content should be like the answer to a user’s questions. Not styled as an … more »

[amazon-product align="right"]0982219113[/amazon-product][Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 40 min. As a follow-up to my review of Anne Gentle’s book, [amazon-product type="text" text="Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation"]0982219113[/amazon-product], I also interviewed her for a podcast. Now you can listen to Anne talk about some of the concepts in her book in a more personal way through the headphones of your … more »

One of the perks about being a blogger is that authors occasionally send me their books to review. Recently Anne Gentle sent me her new book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne’s book is particularly important because it addresses the situation of the technical writer today, with the web in the state it is — user generated, filled with blogs, wikis, Twitter, … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 8 min. Ginny Redish has just written a new book, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. I had a chance to meet up with Ginny at the STC Summit and interviewed her briefly about her new book. Redish told me,  “Every use of … more »

At the last voice workshop I attended, the instructor (Scott) gave us scripts to read and then critiqued our performance. I tried to imagine myself talking to a friend rather than reading the script, but it didn’t come across with much effect. Scott said I was being too reserved, too monotone. I realized that my conversation technique with voice overs, which I wrote about with … more »