Posts Tagged ‘Manual’
Technical Book Review – “How to Write a Manual” by Elizabeth Slatkin
© Ugur Akinci How to Write a Manual by Elizabeth Slatkin (Ten Speed Press, 1991,120 pp) is the kind of perfect introductory book that a technical writing manager should buy and distribute to all her entry-level writers. Organized in a logical fashion, the book covers every obvious aspect of the document-writing process. It touches on…
Read More22 Questions to Ask Before Writing a Technical Manual
The traditional book format (“codex”) is under serious attack both from online and ebook platforms, and structured documents that have “topic” as their most basic information unit instead of the “page.” However, I believe the book format will be with us for a long time to come while XML-based non-book formats continue to make important…
Read MoreTechnical Book Review — "Creating Technical Manuals: A Step-by-Step Approach to Writing User-Friendly Instructions"
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Creating Technical Manuals: A Step-By-Step Approach to Writing User-Friendly Instructions by Gerald Cohen and Donald H. Cunningham was printed back in 1984. So like most pre-Internet era technical books, it’s outdated in terms of visual content. Its page layout suggestions, for example, shows how rapidly the technical communication field has developed…
Read MoreTwo Different Types of Software User Manuals in Technical Writing
© Ugur Akinci In technical writing, there are two different but related types of software user manuals and I call them “Button Guides” and “Procedural Tutorials”. A FUNCTION or GUI INTERFACE MANUAL explains what each “button”, or the graphic user interface (GUI) element that one sees on a screen, is all about and how does…
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