How to Improve Your Technical Copy by Editing "Trash Can Sentences"
You can improve your technical copy instantly by staying away from sentences with a long RANDOM list of objects. I call them “trash can sentences.” Here is a technical copy example: “The Committee will meet Thursday morning to discuss building permits, hiring practices, derivatives trading, inventory, Thanksgiving recess, product modeling, labor issues, Caribbean resorts, IPO…
Read MoreTechnical Documentation of "Quality Management" Projects
© Ugur Akinci “Quality Management” is yet one of the many employment opportunities available for technical writers today. If you have not heard of QM before, here is a great blog entry by Irv Boichuk explaining the concept and how it relates to technical writing very well: A technical writer is indeed an excellent person…
Read More
How to Write a Great Index for your Technical Document
Introduction An index, as we covered in our pillar post on indexing, is a list of terms in your technical document that points to the location of the term within the document. In a printed book, an index typically appears on a separate page, often near the end. It is an alphabetical list of words…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – What Does it Take to Become a Technical Writer?
For one thing, you really do not need to be an artistically creative person to become a technical writer. Forget about plot, dialog, character, original concept, etc. Actually someone quipped “if it ain’t boring then it ain’t tech writing.” That’s harsh but there is some truth in it too. Technical writing is certainly not about…
Read More