Posts by Ugur Akinci
How to Ensure High Quality in Technical Writing
“Can you tell us more about quality in technical writing?” a reader asked yesterday, in a private email. Here are my thoughts on the topic: 1) Quality starts with intra-team cohesion if you are working as a part of a technical writing team. If you’re a lone writer, this means you should either have your own…
Read MoreTechnical Book Review: THE STATE OF STRUCTURED AUTHORING by Alan S. Pringle and Sarah S. O’Keefe
“Structured authoring” and “single sourcing” have been hot buzz phrases for quite a few years now. If you’re a technical writer, I’m sure you’re either applying these documentation methods in your daily work, getting ready to implement them, or learning about them. I personally am in the last two categories, both still learning ins and…
Read MoreHow to Automatically Add a Decimal Point in MS Excel
It’s so easy to enter numbers into an MS Excel cell and have Excel add the decimal point automatically for you. Select the Excel button. Select Excel Options. Click and select the Advanced options. Select the “Automatically insert a decimal point” check-box. Select the number of places from the drop-down list. You’re done. If you’ve…
Read MoreEasyBIB Automatic Bibliography Tool and Citation Maker
EasyBIB is a great online automatic bibliography tool that comes in both free and paid versions. It is versatile, comprehensive, and comes with productivity features that I’m sure all students, scholars, and writers would appreciate. The tool is easy-to-use and free to use for all, which makes it an excellent choice for students who need…
Read MoreProposal Planning and Writing for an RFP
Proposal Planning and Writing for an RFP (Request For Proposal) is a lucrative writing field with a constant demand due to the $500 billion (and ever growing) U.S. federal procurement pie. Every year companies large and small compete to get a slice out of that pie by responding to RFPs issued by different departments and…
Read MoreHow to Create Shortcuts to MS Office Files and Folders
© Ugur Akinci Creating shortcuts to MS Office files and folders is a great way to organize your content by providing multiple navigation points to the same document. Shortcuts eliminate the need to have the multiple copies of the save document in multiple locations. With this method, when you edit the source file, all shortcuts…
Read MoreHow to Use Structured References in MS Excel
How to use structured references in MS Excel is a skill that you should develop to maximize your productivity when using MS Excel. MS Excel has three types of ways to refer to a data cell: Relative reference (like B1) Absolute reference (like $B$1) Structured reference (you need to use a table) “Why should I…
Read MoreHow to Web Broadcast a PPT Presentation with MS PowerPoint
There is a very easy way to broadcast your MS PowerPoint presentation on the web so that your audience, no matter where they are, can follow the presentation in real-time if they have a browser and access to the Internet. They do not even need to have PowerPoint installed on their machine. However, for sound,…
Read MoreThree Options to Save a MS Word Page as an HTML Web Page
© Ugur Akinci Granted, no professional web designer would use MS Word to design a web page. There are much better tools for that out there like the mother-of-all-HTM-editors DreamWeaver. However, there are also times when you may not have ready access to a web designer or when you’d like to post up a page…
Read MoreFacts and Emotions in Technical Writing and Presentations
Balance the facts and emotions properly to get your point across more easily. Technical documentation readers are usually a “voluntarily captive audience.” They choose to read a user manual by their own determination. When we get to a piece of technical documentation we are usually ready and willing to believe in the author and follow…
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