This is the same sentence said in different ways. One question I've often wondered is how technical writers can feel so comfortable stringing together words on paper but be completely inadequate when it comes to vocalizing the same text in a script, such as reading for a video tutorial. We talk often about voice and tone, and consider ourselves, as writers, experts in understanding how to communicate. We can adopt different styles in ou...
I'm currently listening to one of the best books I've come across in a long time: The Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. This book is so popular it enjoys a four and a half star rating on Audible from more than 4,600 reviewers and costs 2 credits rather than 1 (even though it's only 17 hours). The book, in the genre of science, covers the history of the world to the present, beginning with the origins of the universe, the...
Quick reference guides 1.0 Quick Reference Guides: The Poetry of Technical Writing 1.1 Quick Reference Guide Formats -- Tips for Finding Attractive Layouts 1.2 STC Presentation this Thursday: "Quick Reference Guides: Short and Sweet Technical Documentation" ...
Recently a fellow tech writer tweeted the following: Just taught my first #Zumba class! If I were @tomjohnson, I'd find a creative way to tie this to #techcomm. Any good ideas? — Michelle Sander (@techwriterme) August 31, 2012 I realize that I sometimes come across as zealous about technical writing. This is how I've branded my online persona. And sure enough, although I don't participate in Zumba, after reading the tweet I couldn't help ...
After a week of not riding my bike to work, I resumed the regular riding routine. It felt so good to ride to work again. I'm convinced that the only way to ride a bike regularly and for enough time is to fit the ride into a commute to work. I don't commute all the way home, though I bet I could if I wanted. I drive to a nearby grocery story and park there. It cuts out 3.5 miles from the ride, which means I can make it in under 50 minutes rathe...
It may surprise you to find that the wikipedia entry for RTFM is a actually longer than the Wikipedia entry for technical communication. For the uninitiated, RTFM stands for "Read the F____ Manual." Substitute your favorite adjective there for F. Flipping, frickin, fantastic, fine, friendly, etc. The RTFM response captures the disconnect between technical writers and end-users. Presumably, technical writers include the information in the ...
Defining my role is not an easy task, and I see it continue to evolve as I get more experience as a technical writer. Recently I have added user support and user advocate to the list of roles I play. Although I often don't have time to play a support role, I've found that when I do engage in support activities, it provides me with a wealth of useful information. I recently added a "Submit Feedback" link in my documentation. Through this ...
Every so often I ask my site sponsors to send me a few paragraphs of a message they want to broadcast to readers. This message from the sponsors post contains a ton of information about a variety of products, programs, new releases, upcoming webinars, conferences, recorded presentations, tools, and other information for the technical communication community. From Southern Polytechnic State University (message from Laura Palmer and Carol B...
It's been way too long since I last wrote an entry on this blog. I hope to get back into a more regular rhythm. The summer has ended and the kids are returning to school. Callie will enter the second grade tomorrow; Avery is going into sixth grade, and Lucy is going into kindergarten. Mollie is about ready to turn two. The summer was a good one, with no major accidents or calamities. Lucy learned to ride a bicycle. Avery participated on swim t...
Vinish Garg The following is a guest post by Vinish Garg, Director of Operations in Technical Documentation at vhite systems. When I watched the Master Chef series (Australian version and then Indian version) last year, an important lesson for contestants was to not focus only on extraordinary or most creative dishes. The judges never really looked only for creativity, fancy ingredients, and garnishing. To the judges, adherence to instr...
One of my favorite books on design is Robin Williams' The Non-Designers Design Book. The book provides advice on graphic design more than anything else, but at least one principle applies to information design as well: Proximity. The Proximity principle says you should group similar content together. Items relating to each other should be grouped close together. When several items are in close proximity to each other, they become one visu...
One findability technique commonly ignored in help applications is the glossary. A glossary defines key terms in an application. How does it assist with findability? A glossary helps users know the right words so that they can be effective with their searches. After all, how do users find what they're looking for unless they know the right words? In Designing Web Navigation, James Kalbach explains the shortcomings of search: Search is cer...
Previously, I've used WordPress plugins to style this blog's view on mobile devices, but with all the buzz about multi-device display and publishing, I decided to switch themes to a completely responsive theme. Because I use minimalistic themes, switching from one minimalistic theme to another is almost unnoticeable. But so you can see the difference, resize your browser to a smaller size. As you resize it, you'll see the navigate bar sud...
At the last STC Summit, Andrea Ames gave a presentation on progressive information disclosure. If you follow progressive information disclosure, you avoid giving the reader all the information up front. Instead, you present a little bit of information to the reader and then let reader choose to view more if he or she wants. A classic example is on-screen help text that presents a brief sentence followed by a "Read more" link, which takes ...
So far I've been exploring different ways to organize content to increase findability, but I haven't examined perhaps the most fundamental technique of all that affects how we organize and shape our content: topic-based authoring. What does topic-based authoring mean? Somewhere in learning how to be a technical writer, I was taught or assumed that topic-based authoring meant kind of the following: When you're exploring software documentat...
