Archive for October 2010
Microsoft Word 2010 Walkthrough: New Features
STC India Article: "7 Ways to Avoid Misunderstandings When Writing for an International Audience"
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Just published my first article in INDUS, STC (Society for Technical Communication) India Newsletter, October 2010 issue. 7 Ways to Avoid Misunderstandings When Writing for an International Audience Please let me know what you think. Welcome all comments…
Read MoreHow to Write Blog Comments that will Get Published
The chances are you’re reading a number of blogs like this one throughout the day and leaving comments with the hope that they will get published. Leaving comments have a two-fold purpose: 1) To contribute to the ongoing discussion, and 2) To get backlinks to your own website unless the site owner has turned on…
Read MoreWhat are the Differences Between Technical Illustration, Information Design, and Editorial Illustration?
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Thanks to a number of responses to an earlier post about Technical Illustration, I had the opportunity to think more about the topic. I now realize that I have not clarified the various niches that exist within the catch-all category of graphic arts that we call “technical illustration.” Here I’d like…
Read MoreHow to Create PDF with Acrobat-Alternative: "Smart PDF Creator"
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Adobe Acrobat is a marvel of a tool. The things that you can do with it is too long a list to print here. But what if all you need to do is covert a MS Word or FrameMaker file to PDF? Would you still need Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro (which…
Read MoreHow to Develop Your Technical Illustration Skills
© Ugur Akinci As I mentioned several times in the past, if you are a technical communicator who enjoys graphic arts, you are missing something in your career if you have not developed your technical illustration skills. Our industry is very ripe for those writers who can also draw and create all kinds of technical…
Read MoreEliminate "I" and "You" from Peer Reviews
© 2010 Ugur Akinci I have previously mentioned in another blog post that one of the best techniques to use in a peer review is to eliminate the second-person singular pronoun, “You.” I recommended talking in terms of “me” and “I” in order not to offend the other party. For example, instead of saying “You…
Read MoreHow to Create a List of Figures in MS Word
Follow these steps… (1) Give all your figures a caption. (2) Click your cursor to where you’d like to place your List of Figures. (NOTE: Microsoft calls the same list “Table of Figures” unfortunately. What if you need to create a list of tables? Should you call that a “Table of Tables”?) The traditional location…
Read MoreChris Brogan’s Rules of "Success with Peace of Mind"
Most of us run just too hard… We push push push, at the office, at home, while we drive, on so-called vacations… How many of us feel a little bit guilty that we do not devote as much time to our families, community and loved ones as we should? Armed with personal to-do lists, weekly,…
Read MoreHow to Create a List of Tables in MS Word
Follow these steps… (1) Give all your tables a caption. (2) Click your cursor at where you’d like to place your List of Tables. Its traditional location in a technical document is right after the Table of Contents (if any) and after the “List of Figures” (if any). (3) Select the References tab from the…
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