In Microsoft Word, you can combine innocuous basic tools to accomplish surprisingly large tasks—to make Word work for you, not against you. Geoff Hart illustrates using Macros to streamline your process to validate citations. Continue reading ...
Elementary, My Dear Watson: the Editor as Detective
Editing requires many of the same skills as a detective, and uncovering means, motive, and opportunity can assist writers in being more effective. Continue reading ...
Optimizing the Mobile Web-browsing Experience through Responsive Design
When the information is the most important component of a design, users of the design should have the ability to customize the display to meet their needs rather than being constrained by a suboptimal fixed design. Continue reading ...
Effective Infographics: Telling Stories in the Technical Communication Context
The word infographic is a portmanteau created by jamming together two words: information that you want to convey in a graphic form. Bar graphs and their cousins primarily present numbers. An infographic informs—it helps the viewer to translate raw data into meaningful information, and the accuracy of the data is less important than the accuracy of the message. Continue reading ...
Ten Design Principles and When to Violate Them
Dieter Rams, a German industrial designer from the functionalist school, followed a philosophy that will sound familiar when I paraphrase it: “form follows function” and “usability is fitness for purpose.” You know his work if you've used any Braun products released from the 1960s to the 1990s, or if you've used recent Apple products, many of which were inspired by his design principles. Let’s look at what technical communicators can learn from these principles—and when we should consider violating them. Continue reading ...
Undead Americans and the Need for Improved Audience Analysis
Undead Americans are a rapidly growing market segment, and are predictably attracting increasing attention from technology companies that have recognized the profit potential from this market segment. Before continuing, I should note that technical communicators must avoid using the dismissive abbreviation “UAs", not to mention the offensive epithet “zombies”, to describe these individuals. Such diminutives lead us to objectify these important members of our audience rather than treating them as individuals, leading to stereotyping rather than the effective creation of empirically derived, audience-focused personas. Continue reading ...
Onshoring: a Zombie Success Story – Part 2
Not only did I not eat the donuts; I went across the street for my chai. No sense taking any chances, and I needed a change of scene to think things through. What I’d learned about zombies was only reassuring from the perspective that nobody would be trying to eat my brain at work, and we wouldn't be locking the doors and hiding out with shotguns and talwars to ward off the zombie apocalypse. Continue reading ...
Onshoring: a Zombie Success Story – Part 1
The whoosh of six simultaneously released bated breaths drowned out Cook's next words. We’d been expecting the worst, and had spent more time during the last month helping each other polish our résumés than actually documenting the software. Nobody had noticed, lending an uncomfortable amount of credibility to the rumors. Continue reading ...
Writer’s Block: Different Causes Have Different Solutions – Part 2
Practicalities are obstacles you can solve by choosing an appropriate strategy and then gritting your teeth and doing the necessary work. Because they aren’t psychological barriers, they’re much easier to get past because all you need to do is force yourself to follow the appropriate steps, possibly with help from friends and colleagues. You don’t always need your muse to be able to write: some aspects of writing, such as developing a timeline or plot outline, are fairly mechanical. Since you’re the only one who will see them, they don’t have to be perfect. Continue reading ...