I say eleven, because Ben Minson came up with this excellent list of seven plus four more on his blog, Gryphon Mountain. His list gives reasons why a company should hire a technical writer. Check it out if you need to justify your existence or if nobody has fought through the cobwebs to your […]

Wired magazine has some interesting pieces this month. Well, every month is pretty good, but writers might appreciate this behind-the-scenes look at how an article is assigned, written, edited, and designed. You can  read the email correspondence between author and editor, and get an idea of how to pitch your story idea to a magazine. […]

I thought it was high time for an update on the first two weeks of my contract. As I alluded to previously, the project I’m working on right now involves the design of a new phone. It’s a complex system with many components, and is rather hush-hush at the moment so I can’t really […]

DocTrain chugged along today and picked up some speed with a heavy emphasis on social media. As with yesterday’s post, I’ll give you the skinny and the slides on each presentation as well my pick for ‘what’s hot’.
Great people, good food, and leading-edge content. Kudos to the organizers and to the Marriott Pinnacle […]

Today I attended a pre-conference workshop on Simplified Technical English (STE) at DocTrain West. Berry Braster, director of Tedopres, presented the benefits of writing documentation using standardized, unambiguous English, especially when materials are being translated into other languages.
The implementation of STE involves developing a company-specific dictionary and using documentation software to aid in […]