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" ...
After my last post about being an individual contributor, a reader asked if I had heard of the Peter Principle or Parkinson's Laws. I hadn't, so I read about them on Wikipedia, as well as a related principle, the Dilbert Principle. The Peter Principle The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." In other words, employees who perform their roles with competence are promoted int...
For someone who has the job of "technical writer," I spend very little time writing. It amazes me how quickly the day fills up with non-writing tasks. Meetings, reports, issues -- they seem to surface again and again at work, requiring my attention. I sometimes try timing myself and find that if I can get in three hours of writing during the day, that's good. This seems utterly ridiculous to me. I get a lot of satisfaction from writing. T...
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 in a logical way, making sure each paragraph conta...
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 tasks users will do with th...
I am constantly reflecting on the answer to this question: How can I draw upon the enthusiasm, intelligence, and skill of willing volunteers all around me to take our organization's site to the next level? This goal mostly relates to my involvement in my organization's technology blog, which has about 80 volunteer writers. In my post about what I learned during 2011 as a technical communicator, I wrote: Community collaboration is extremel...
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The following is a guest post by Steve Jong, chair of the STC Certification Commission. What does the certification program involve? First, for an introduction to the subject, I recommend the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_certification. Our Certified Professional Technical Communicator™ (CPTC) credential provides assurance to employers and the public that the certified practitioner possesses the knowledge...
Ugur Akinci The following is an interview with Ugur Akinci, a technical writer for Honeywell Corporation. Ugur asked me these same questions for an interview on this site. After answering them, I was curious about how he would answer the same questions, so I asked Ugur to respond to the questions for my site as well. (1) How long you've been a technical communicator? Where do you work right now? How would you characterize a typical day...
I'm giving an STC webinar this week on designing quick reference guides. Here are the details: Designing Quick Reference Guides Date: Wednesday, 25 January | 1:00–2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) Condensing a manual into an attractive quick reference guide requires a poet's precision with language, but it also requires you to exercise skill with visual design and page layout. These short guides blend marketing with instruction, allowing you to combine...
The following is a guest post by Michelle Tompkins. Earlier this year she asked me to post a survey about technical communication and blogging. I posted it here, and then asked if she would follow up to share her findings. This guest post shares her findings. Earlier in December, Tom Johnson was nice enough to help me with my graduate research on how blogs are used with the workplace of a technical communicator. I received great feedback...
We had a couple of writing interns join our group this month. To track writing assignments for the technology blog, I've been using JIRA. JIRA is a bug tracking tool from Atlassian (the same company that makes Confluence). It's typically used by software teams to track bugs during software development projects. You can add comments to items, assign items to team members, assign the items to sprints, create advanced viewing filters for the...
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 office. I boxed up about 15 boxes of books, which will be donated to Salvation Army. While sorting through his li...
I walked into Home Depot the other day and, seeing a clerk near the entry way, asked where the storage boxes were. Immediately the clerk told me. After I found my boxes, I asked another clerk where the gloves and Sharpee markers were. Again, she gave the answer immediately. In my experience, apart from wandering aimlessly around the store for extended periods of time, this is about the only way to find things in Home Depot. In the goal to...
One of the findability features in our help systems that we often overlook is the breadcrumb. Breadcrumbs typically sit above the page title and highlight the hierarchical path that leads to where you are. Here's a screenshot of a typical breadcrumb, taken from Adobe Illustrator's help: Greg Nudelman discusses breadcrumbs in one of his chapters in Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success. This post mainly details notes from ...
