One of the primary tasks any writer or editor must perform is to impose consistency on a manuscript. Consistency is particularly important for technical writers, because it makes the task of writing easier: if you don’t have to develop a new solution each time you face the same problem, you can simply find a solution that works for all occurrences of that problem and use it thereafter. From the technical writer’s perspective, it’s best if you try to build in that consistency right from the start, because it can save you a lot of time both in your initial draft and in your subsequent revisions. Read more of this technical writing article »
TechWhirl Columns
Some of the best writers on the Internet for technical writing and technical communications.
Save Time by Mastering the Basics: Efficient Movement within a File
We technical communicators aren’t so different from the rest of the world: we tend to reach a comfortable plateau in our skills, and so long as we’re meeting our deadlines reasonably efficiently using those skills, we tend to lack the motivation to pay close attention to what we’ve been doing and look for improvements. But what if I told you that you could potentially save 15 minutes per day without doing anything more arduous than mastering three new keyboard shortcuts? Read more of this technical writing article »
Personas and the five W’s: Developing Content that Meets Reader Needs, Pt. 2
Part II: Applying the five W’s In the first part of this article, I introduced the concept of personas, a tool for creating a detailed description of the people we’re writing for. An ideal persona becomes so real that we intimately understand who that person is, what their needs are, the problems they face—and therefore, [...] Read more of this technical writing article »
Taking Advantage of Reflexive Responses
While prospecting for information on a Web site that I visit fairly regularly, I recently fell victim to a fascinating Web page trick. The trick took advantage of the kind of reflexive (“programmed”) response we each develop once we grow so familiar with a task that we no longer consciously think about what we’re doing. [...] Read more of this technical writing article »
Dealing with Difficult Employees in the Technical Communication Workplace
Some of the more intractable problems we face on the job are the human ones. But cranky though Microsoft Word often seems, most of its blowups are at least predictable; humans are anything but. The worst problems can arise when you find yourself in a situation where power relationships come into play, which is often [...] Read more of this technical writing article »