Technical Writing
2 Golden Principles of Peer Review
© Ugur Akinci There will be instances in your career as a professional technical writer when you will be asked to “peer review” (which is, yes, a compound “verb” these days) someone else’s or your own work. This may happen in a group meeting (or teleconference/webinar) setting when you may be invited to offer your…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Use the Method that Untied a 400-year Knot
As a child I grew up only 90 miles away from Polatli, the site of the famous “Knot of Gordian” in Anatolia (what is today modern Turkey). This was such a tough knot that, according to the legend, for 400 years no one could untie it. Then came Alexander the Great, the world-conquering commander with…
Read MoreEliminate Adverbs and Improve Your Writing
© Ugur Akinci You can improve your writing right away by eliminating all the unnecessary adverbs. 1) Eliminate adverbs by using a correct verb instead. EXAMPLE: “He walked into the room cockily.” BETTER: “He swaggered into the room.” EXAMPLE “She walked into the room confidently.” BETTER: “She sashayed into the room.” EXAMPLE: “He looked threateningly.”…
Read MoreInterviewing a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Introduction A technical writer will periodically need to interview Subject Matter Experts (SME) to gather information about a technical document. More often that not, and especially within the context of software development, most SMEs are engineers and software developers. But they can also be mechanical, electrical and other types of engineers, hardware installers, network engineers,…
Read MoreStewart, Cramer, and the Question of Values in Technical Documentation
© Ugur Akinci Did you watch the way Daily Show’s Jon Stewart grilled Mad Money’s Jim Cramer yesterday? It was a trashing well deserved by Jim Cramer in particular, and CNBC in general. As an American citizen who has lost 40% of all his life savings within the last 9 months, I thought it was…
Read MoreHow to Format Your Technical Documents Consistently With a Template
© Ugur Akinci A template is the heart, soul and backbone of any technical or business document. Consistency of documentation is what creates that subliminal sense of trust and confidence in the end-users. Someone once quipped: “it ain’t technical documentation if it ain’t boring.” This of course is not true since I always found technical…
Read MoreGoogle's Translation Service: How Good Is It?
© Ugur Akinci I’m fascinated by Google’s translation service since it promises to translate texts among over three dozen languages, including some quite exotic ones. So I decided to test the reliability of Google’s translation engine by performing a simple test. 1) I took two sentences in English and translated them into a foreign language…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – How to Comply With Moral and Ethical Standards in Technical Documentation
© Ugur Akinci Technical writing has a number of moral and ethical standards that a professional technical writer needs to comply with. Violate them at your own peril, by risking the sudden demise of your career. Here are some of these issues… Plagiarism – Needless to say, copying and pasting other people’s work as yours…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Top 3 Open Source Software You Can Use to Write and Design Technical
© Ugur Akinci I use Adobe FrameMaker and Microsoft Office on a daily basis, and Microsoft Visio, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrate on an almost-daily basis. These are the tools of the technical writing trade that I wouldn’t do without. I love my software (I really do) and what they can do for me. However,…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Wurman's LATCH Model of Information Organization For Technical Documentation
© Ugur Akinci Technical writing has its mechanical aspects that need to be mastered. A good technical writer must know how to use English effectively as well as various software products to produce acceptable technical documents. But I wish technical writing were all about that. The hardest part comes before one even sits down in…
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