The Importance of Writing Perfect Checklists

Ask yourself: would you be willing to fly in an airplane flown by a pilot who relies on his or her “memory and track record” rather than a detailed and time-tested checklist? I wouldn’t. The deeper question is: if checklists are perfect and indispensable for flying airplanes safely and reliably, then why don’t we use…

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How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Writing Services

© 2009 Ugur Akinci There is a good way to use the Twitter to promote your writing services, and another way that’s not that good. I’m finding these things out myself by trial and error and I wanted to share some of my findings with you. 1) Always share something useful and relevant, either by…

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Writers: Searching Through the Job Ads is not Marketing

© Ugur Akinci Generally speaking, we writers are not good at marketing our services. We love what we do and yet expect to be “discovered” and paid well for it too. Think again. This blog entry was prompted by an email from an obviously-very-qualified reader who asked whether she needs to get a technical writing…

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How Reliable is Your “Reference Data”?

Before the Crisis of 2008 hit, main mortgage brokers on the Wall Street were confident of the way they were running their business. Their software programs were written by crackerjack developers from top Ivy League schools. When they fed their sub-prime lending numbers into these programs, the result was “positive.” After a year of monitoring,…

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ARGUMENT: Why Technical Writers Shouldn't Be "Writers"

Excerpts: Technical writers love the written word. Perhaps, we love it a little too much? We need to ask ourselves is the written word the best thing for documentation? Is it the best thing for us as an industry, and is it the best thing for you as a content developer. Over the last several…

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Document Menu of Adobe "Writer" (Professional)

I know —  the good and hard-working folks over at Adobe do not like me refer to Adobe Professional as “Writer” but there are 2 good reasons why I do so: 1) “Writer” is a term well-established within the technical writing community. Every tech writer I know refers to Adobe Professional as “Adobe Writer.”  I’m…

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Perseverance vs. Perseveration and the Role of Stress in Writing Life

© Ugur Akinci I have always wondered about the relative merits of hanging in there and keep pushing up against life’s obstacles (perseverance), on the one hand, and continuing to do what clearly does not work and suffering the inevitable consequences of uncontrollable repetition (perseveration), on the other. The dominant market mentality encourages us to…

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How much should you charge as a writer?

The question of “how much to charge” is always up in the air. I personally try not to quote an hourly rate and much rather work for a set fee. That avoids any second guessing on the part of the client as to how many hours any job “should take.” Having said that, here is…

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