TechWhirl: Technical Communication Recap for August 30, 2013

technical communication recap for July 5Got any plans for the weekend that don’t involve driving, grilling, or saying goodbye to Summer? Take a look around TechWhirl and catch up on your reading, enter our contest to become a LavaCon 2013 writer, vote in the current poll, download a template, enjoy a summer rerun on eBooks, and get some tips and tricks in our newest column, The Help Files, from our own Duct Tape Writer, Craig Cardimon.

There’s always a good debate going on over at the email discussion list, particularly if, this week, you’re interested in FrameMaker master pages, the relative usefulness of tables of figures, doing multi-boots, proper use of em and en dashes, or answering question on opening movies in windows. Top it off with some nice curated goodness from other wonderful spots on the web in Tech Writer This Week.

Have a great weekend!

-Connie and the gang at TechWhirl

 Tech Writer This Week

Tech Writer This Week for August 29, 2013

We’re preparing the upcoming Labor Day Weekend by celebrating the creativity, thoughtfulness and hard work of the wider world in Tech Writer This Week.

 The Help Files

The Help Files: Linking In, Emailing Out, and Getting Down with Note-Taking

TechWhirl’s own Duct Tape Writer, Craig Cardimon, scours the far reaches of the web to provide the Help Files to his friends and anyone else who doesn’t have time to search for some work-a-day gems. His collection of hints, tips, and tricks can make anyone more productive and less prone to screwing up their work life, no matter whether the office is in a cubicle farm, a catamaran, or the couch

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Writers wanted for LavaCon

TechWhirl is firing up our now more community-minded bus and preparing to head to the Great Northwest for LavaCon 2013 and we’d like to have you join us. By you, we mean people who want to go to the event and help us tell the poor folks left at home about the event.

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Summer Rerun: Building E-Books: A Tool Overview for Technical Writers

Summer Rerun: As e-books become another option for publishing technical content, writers are faced with more choices among the tools to produce them. In my previous articles on e-book readers and formats, I noted the similarities between e-book formats and the online help formats that technical writers have been using for many years. In this article, I’ll look at some of the tools you can use to create EPUB books, the most common e-book format. I’ll also show how you can convert an EPUB to Amazon’s Kindle format.

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Is the End Near for Printed Books? (poll)

When you get to read some really interesting posts and see some good debate from really smart people, it generally means that there’s a really good poll question just waiting to be unearthed and published. So it is with the idea that the time for printed books may be at an end.

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