Online Video Courses

BOOK REVIEW: Microsoft Manual of Style – 4th Edition is Out

By Ugur Akinci | February 28, 2012

Here is the 4th edition of a favorite of mine – Microsoft Manual of Style. I forgot the number of times in my career when this authoritative reference volume helped me settle the style arguments that would never have been settled otherwise. The fourth edition is a proof that Microsoft kept up well with the…

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Three Different Roles in Author-it Integrated Technical Publishing Platform

By Ugur Akinci | February 24, 2012

© Ugur Akinci Gone are the times when technical writers used to design their own pages, decide on the character and paragraph styles, write the content, and then publish their work. Almost every integrated technical documentation platform these days separate the role of template makers from those who actually compile the content and sit down and write…

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How to Add a SEARCH Bookmark to a PDF Document

By Ugur Akinci | February 24, 2012

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…

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How to Create a Reusable Snippet in a SmartDocs MS Word Technical Document

By Ugur Akinci | February 23, 2012

A reusable snippet in SmartDocs is any reusable block of text and media.  Think of a snippet as a “library item” that you can use any time you like by inserting it at where your cursor is. When you have a text saved as a snippet you do not have to write it anymore. It saves time and energy and…

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