Editor’s Note: Yehoshua Paul recently tried his hand at developing a rhyming song in the fine tradition of teaching the English alphabet to children. If your workplace often seems like a pre-school nursery with brats, cherubs, crybabies and rugrats, you can probably relate. A bit of fun and pleasantness for a Monday morning–enjoy!
A is for Acrobat to publish in print
B is for backup – you shouldn’t need the hint
C is for content which is produced en-masse
D is for deadlines that are always yesterday
E is for engineers who don’t know how to spell
F is for the formatting that makes your life a living h**l
G is for graphics the smaller the better
H is for Help – which you constantly deliver
I is for the iPad your output needs to support
J is for Jpeg – don’t sell it short
K is for the knowledgebase you need to update
L is the links which you never want to break
M is for the multiple channels through which you deliver content
N is for notes you take – deciphering them is torment
O is for open source which always lacks support
P is for PDF – Don’t make me snort
Q is for QuarkXpress – it was for desktop publishing
R is for Robohelp, and the content that needs importing
S is for the SME who ignores your glare
(and questions, and scheduled meeting, and e-mail messages)
T is for the tables at which your users stare
U is for the understanding that seems so elusive
V is for the version releases that are supposed to be all-inclusive
W is for wikis – lots of fun to use
X is for XML – the technical writer’s blues
Y oh why oh why am I writing this poem?
Z is for the zipfile I just sent – can I go home?
Now you know your A-B-Cs
Let’s see what type of technical writer you’ll be
