In case you are coming here for editing services or advice, I’ve concentrated much of my editing information on The Content Editor blog. This blog also has information on my rates, the genres I edit, and a contact form where …
In the post on weak verbs and passive voice, I mentioned that technical documentation benefits from attempts to prevent localization or translation problems. In this post, I wanted to speak a bit more about what can happen if you don’t …
Read more →
A recent manager insisted that I was never allowed to include the word “use” in any technical documentation I wrote because it was a weak verb and the manager said there was now a hard-and-fast rule about never using weak verbs. It was an all-out war …
Read more →
The Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias where you have knowledge that another person does not and you have forgotten what it was like to NOT have that knowledge. This makes it harder to explain things to a person …
Read more →As a writer who works on API (Application Programming Interfaces) quite a bit, I have heard quite a few API documentation myths that I believe stand in the way of having good API documentation. Documentation that really helps the users both …
Read more →
I recently attended a science fiction conference and, as I often do, I sat in on a lot of writing-focused panel talks. I got a great deal out of some of them and less from others but I’m always interested …
Read more →Being flooded with information doesn't mean we have the right information or are in touch with the right people.
Bill Gates
Most writers are aware of the fact that editing your own work is many times more difficult than editing the work of another writer. No matter how careful you try to be, it’s far too easy to overlook potential problems …
Read more →
A technical writer is usually defined as someone who writes the technical documentation that allows a user to actually use a product. But a technical writer is not necessarily skilled in the particular technology they are writing about. Is this …
Read more →
DigiGirlz is a Microsoft YouthSpark program for high school girls that is intended to give them a chance to learn about careers in high tech, to meet women currently working in different roles in high tech and to take classes …
Read more →