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 →
Writing
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 →
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 →
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 →At my current place of employment, a lot of emphasis is placed on who the audience is for our technical content. Are our readers developers? Are they IT Professionals? Are the consumers? A lot of time and energy is spent …
Read more →I’ll be giving my short (1 hour) walk through the cheat sheets of my Word for Writers class at this year’s Emerald City Writers conference in October. Right now I’m scheduled for Sunday at 11am! Hope to see folks there!
Read more →Today I gave a shorter talk on my Word for Writers class to the Greater Seattle Romance Writers group. I came away with great data on adding Word 2003 to the book/class and some good questions on issues people have …
Read more →I was just in a meeting at the Evil Day Job where we met with representatives from Author It. Author It is a software suite designed for documentation management and production and I’ve only heard a few rumbles about it …
Read more →Just a note that I’ll be a tad distracted as I job hunt. The big layoff at Microsoft included my position. Will write or manage projects for food!
Read more →I’m ready to put my energy and talents to work for ME. With over 13 years of experience working for Microsoft, I really want to use all that knowledge and wisdom to educate and teach users that computers and software …
Read more →