Online Video Courses

4 Levels of Editing in Technical Writing

By Ugur Akinci | September 14, 2010

Writing is re-writing; that is, editing. Technical editing is a crucial part of all technical writing projects. But we have to remember there are multiple levels of technical editing which makes the task all the more challenging. LEVEL 1 EDITING Spec Editing. Does the document satisfy all the macro requirements specified in the Documentation Plan?…

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Proportional- and Fixed-Length Spaces in Adobe FrameMaker

By Ugur Akinci | September 13, 2010

There used to be a time when writers were very fond of double-spaces after a period, or as many spaces as they liked. There are those who argue that the habit started with those U.S. government workers using IBM Selectric typewriters (yes, once upon a time writers used to bang on the keys of clumsy…

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How to Use Smart Quotes with Adobe FrameMaker and MS Word (with a WARNING)

By Ugur Akinci | September 13, 2010

First let’s define our terms. These are called (left and right) Smart Quotation marks (or, “Smart Quotes” for short): in contrast to these, (left and right) Standard (or, Straight) Quotation marks (or, again “Standard Quotes” or “Straight Quotes” for short): A good reason to use smart quotes is because they look pretty. They should’ve called…

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How to Create an Adobe FrameMaker Custom Document

By Ugur Akinci | September 11, 2010

When you begin to create a new document in Adobe FrameMaker, FM offers 3 format options: Portrait Landscape Custom The first two FrameMaker format options are self-explanatory. In this post we’ll study the third option by creating a Custom Document. 1) Select File > New from the menu (or click the Document option under the…

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