Technical Writing
How to Use Right Chevron (>) Correctly in Procedural Writing
RIGHT CHEVRON (>) is used in technical documents to denote a SERIES of SEQUENTIAL ACTIONS. If you’re writing a software or hardware manual, the changes are those actions would be “GUI actions,” that is, describing what the user should do on the screen with a mouse, keyboard shortcut, or a tablet pen. If you first…
Read MoreComparing Adobe InDesign with Adobe FrameMaker
I’ve been comparing Adobe InDesign with Adobe FrameMaker for the last few weeks, trying to gauge the weak and strong points of each powerhouse application. Here is a summary of my findings: 1) Master Pages Both applications use master pages. That’s good. In both, you can assign any master page to any body page. 2)…
Read MoreThe Worst and Best Review Scenarios for Technical Documents
Review process is where most technical documents either sink or swim: either they improve as a result of to-the-point and clear comments or they become muddled and actually deteriorate as a result of overlapping and conflicting feedback comments. I believe the quality and outcome of a review process has a lot more to do with the way…
Read MoreAdobe InDesign for Publishing Technical Documents on iPhone and iPad
I’ve been studying structured-authoring and DITA for some time with an eye towards publishing technical documents on mobile platforms like iPad and iPhone. I always thought that was the natural way to re-purpose and adapt my FrameMaker documents for the digital media. Recently, however, I became aware of another possibility as I started to study…
Read MoreHow to Add a SEARCH Bookmark to a PDF Document
Usually a PDF document’s bookmarks are generated automatically by the “Distiller engine” based on the paragraph tags you define in the PDF configuration settings. These are usually based on standard tags like “Heading 1”, “Heading 2”, “Chapter Title” etc. But what if you also wanted to add a SEARCH button to your bookmarks so that…
Read MoreHow NOT to Write a User Guide
I don’t like to be negative in general. Life is too short to go around fuming about things that we can’t change. However, there are times when we all need to be critical in order to improve things; especially if they fall within our area of expertise. The other day I bought an iPhone docking…
Read MoreHow to Edit and Manage the Custom Dictionary in a MS Word 2010 Technical Document
© Ugur Akinci MS Word 2010 offers two kinds of dictionaries: 1) The standard default dictionary that gets installed with the MS Office, and 2) the CUSTOM dictionary. Any words that are not in the standard dictionary can be added to the custom dictionary. What’s more, you can create more than one custom dictionaries. For example, for all your medical spreadsheets, you can…
Read MoreArnold Burian – a Technical Communication Interview
© Ugur Akinci Arnold Burian is a technical communicator from Chicago, IL. He is the founder of Technical Writing World, the social network for technical communicators. In January 2012, Arnold is selected the 63rd most influential technical communicator on MindTouch’s list of 400 Most Influential Technical Communicators. QUESTION (1): How long have you been a…
Read MoreHow to Express Opposing Forces Visually in a Word Technical Document
“Opposing Forces” is a fairly common idea both in life and in technical communication. Hope and Fear oppose each other. They may overlap to a certain extent but their effect is very different. In the technical field, assuring backward compatibility and keeping the code length to a minimum, for example, cannot be done at the…
Read More"Should I use an Index for my help file or technical document?"
You should always use an index for all long documents and help files, especially if they are in print format. “How long?” There are no hard and fast rules for that. It’s up to your personal judgment and/or what your client/manager asks for. It depends on the “document specs” or “documentation plan” as well as…
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