Technical Writing
2 File-Naming Tips for Higher Productivity
Every technical writer at some point in his or her career faces this problem until a solution is found: too many files thrown together in a folder, without any easy way to tell which is what. Here are some of my own file naming tips that have helped me a lot over the years. File…
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7 Tips to Write Effective Technical Magazine Articles
Introduction Writing effective technical magazine articles could be great to heighten your visibility as a technical writer. There are many respectable industry magazines and journals like STC’s INTERCOM where you can try to publish your articles both to share your valuable knowledge with the vast technical writing community out there and to market your services…
Read MoreMust Concepts for Software Document Writers
© Ugur Akinci It helps to know what the following are if you’re documenting any software products. It cuts down on your preparation time and saves you from getting those “funny stares” from the developers/engineers when it becomes apparent that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Rule of thumb: always do your homework first…
Read More3 Tips for Writing 10-K Annual Reports for U.S. Corporations
Writing Form 10-K Annual Reports is a lucrative niche that you should consider if you have a finance or investment background or feel comfortable with terminology of economics. Here is a great web site where you can go and take a look at hundreds of annual reports filed each year by U.S. SEC (Securities and…
Read MoreAuthorIt SaaS Cloud Enterprise-Level Technical Writing Platform – Selected Features
© Ugur Akinci Here are a few really cool AuthorIt features that caught my eye during a recent webinar demonstration by the company founder and CEO Paul Trotter. Searching for Content AuthorIt is a powerful structured-authoring editor that allows you to use the same chunk of content many times over. So searching for reusable content…
Read More"I’m a journalist. A reporter… Can I become a successful technical writer?"
Can a journalist become a successful technical writer? I don’t see why not. I was a journalist once upon a time too. After I made the switch to technical writing, I never looked back. Two Skills of Journalists Journalism teaches you mental concentration and time-discipline. When you’re working as a reporter for a daily newspaper…
Read More10 Principles for a Great Technical Tutorial
I’ve compiled these 10 Principles for a Great Technical Tutorial on the basis of my experience as a technical writer who worked for Fortune 100 companies for over 20 years. As a technical writer you may be asked to write and design on-line tutorials on topics ranging from how to set up a customer service…
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How to Insert a Placeholder to a MS Word Document for a Book or Article Citation
Introduction Insert a placeholder to an MS Word document when, while working on the document, you would not have the citations at your fingertips. Problem Yet if you stop to make a search for the citations you may lose your rhythm and momentum. Solution So it makes sense to keep going full-steam ahead and to…
Read MoreThe Difference a Comma Makes
© Ugur Akinci Technical writers must watch their punctuation like a hawk because of the dramatic difference a misplaced punctuation mark makes. Here is a great example from the Understanding Uncertainty web site: “how unlikely the result is due to chance” versus “how unlikely the result is, due to chance” Click here to read the…
Read MoreEbook Self-Publishing Alternatives: Amazon Kindle, Moodle, Tizra
Every week I hear about yet another self-publishing alternative platform. Today I had the chance to have a look at Tizra.com and wanted to compare it to Kindle and Moodle, two of my favorite publishing platforms. KINDLE (http://kdp.amazon.com/) The advantage of Kindle is obvious: where else can you expose your content to millions of daily…
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