Last year I worked on a news article that showcased certain technologies at my work. The news article was an assignment, the kickoff of a series of articles. I worked especially hard on it, as it was the first one to introduce the series. I came up with a sensible structure, gathered interesting facts and information, and then meticulously crafted the content. I structured the information … more »

When I first started as a technical writer, a senior writer taught me how to write documentation. Her approach, which aligns with the traditional way of doing technical writing, generally followed these steps: Get involved as early as you can in the software development process. As soon as prototypes are available, or a functioning development environment, start the documentation process. Think of all the main … 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 was talking with my wife’s uncle last week about writing strategies for fiction, and whether it’s better to outline everything ahead of time, or figure it out as you go. The former is apparently called a “plotter” method and the latter a “pantser” method (called pantser because you fly by the seat of your pants). He said there’s no right way, but if you’re … more »

I’m not sure entirely why, but corporate blogging can be quite difficult. On my professional blog, I can post several times a week in the spare moments of my days, sitting down for 30 minutes here or an hour there and have some substantial content to show for it. But at work, I can spin my wheels on full throttle for hours and only have … more »

Last week while attending the STC Summit, I learned that MindTouch named my blog, I’d Rather Be Writing, the most innovative blog in technical communication. In their post, 2011 Technical Communication Innovation Award Winners, they write, This honor is bestowed upon long-time technical documentation professional Tom Johnson for creating some of the best — and most innovative — original content about the field of technical … more »

I’ve noticed something lately. If you redesign your website, almost no one comments. If you make a cool graphic, almost no one comments. If you make a screencast or video, almost no one comments. But if you write a good post (which is 95% text), you get a ton of comments. I’ve seen this happen over and over. Why is that? In the realm of content, … more »

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 »

Gerry McGovern explains that constantly adding tiny tasks to a home page can bury your main message. Each bit of content you add dilutes the importance of the other content. I would add that the same principle applies to writing. Each word you add to a sentence removes some of the focus from the other words. Sometimes the best way to increase a sentence’s emphasis … more »

Typography for Lawyers provides the basics of typography and general style in an easy-to-read way that would be perfectly suited not only for lawyers, but for anybody whose writing needs a little cleaning up (for example, you could send it to the project manager who keeps putting two spaces after each period). Definitely a handy resource to know about. Hat tip: tc.eserver library.

As I implemented the Organize Series plugin for my long essay about moving From Overlooked to Center Stage, an interesting idea dawned on me: The Long Tail applies to writing as well. The Long Tail is an economic principle claiming that an abundance of little sales of niche products eventually outproduce the mega sales of mainstream products. For example, Amazon.com may not sell many 1970 … more »

Story Now I have a confession to make. I really didn’t want to talk about roles and hats and value. I wanted to talk about story. But I didn’t want to talk about story directly. Instead, I wanted to illustrate it by structuring my entire presentation as a story. You’ve seen that with each of the headings, I labeled a component of the story. I … more »

A Poignant Realization The other week at work we had a first-ever community developers conference. People from all over the state and even the nation came to the conference to participate in the community software projects. As facilitators for the volunteers, my colleague and I were asked to lead a tech writing “deep dive” for the participants who would be working as technical writers. We … more »

Today is the start of both NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, whereas the goal of NaBloPoMo is to post every day for a month. NaBloPoMo started after NaNoWriMo, so NaNoWriMo has more of a defined purpose: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 15 min. For the past couple of days I’ve been in Idaho at a pre-professional writing conference at Brigham Young University – Idaho. The purpose of the writing conference is to bring in published novelists, poets, editors, and professional writers to give students a glimpse into the careers they plan to enter. Recommended link: If … more »