Posts Tagged ‘Technical Writing’
2 Golden Principles of Technical Document Peer Review
There will be instances in your career as a professional writer when you will be asked to “peer review” (which is, yes, a compound “verb” these days) someone else’s work. This may happen in group meeting (or teleconference/webinar) situations when you may be invited to offer you views on how to improve a certain copy…
Read MoreWhat Does a Technical Writer Working for the U.S. Government Look Like?
Let’s start by asking the question — what does a “typical” technical writer who is employed by Uncle Sam really look like? Technical writers are sometimes called “technical communicators” because in reality that’s what they do – they communicate. Writing is just one of the several tools that they use to do that. Those writers…
Read MoreThe Discipline of Punctuation in Technical Writing
© Ugur Akinci Today let’s talk about the discipline of punctuation Technical writing is nothing if it’s not about discipline, precision and consistency. That’s how tech writers impose order on disorder. One of the most basic we impose that order on an otherwise unruly collection of information is the application of stringent punctuation rules. When…
Read More2 File-Naming Tips for Higher Productivity
Every technical writer at some point in his or her career faces this problem until a solution is found: too many files thrown together in a folder, without any easy way to tell which is what. Here are some of my own file naming tips that have helped me a lot over the years. File…
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7 Tips to Write Effective Technical Magazine Articles
Introduction Writing effective technical magazine articles could be great to heighten your visibility as a technical writer. There are many respectable industry magazines and journals like STC’s INTERCOM where you can try to publish your articles both to share your valuable knowledge with the vast technical writing community out there and to market your services…
Read MoreMust Concepts for Software Document Writers
© Ugur Akinci It helps to know what the following are if you’re documenting any software products. It cuts down on your preparation time and saves you from getting those “funny stares” from the developers/engineers when it becomes apparent that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Rule of thumb: always do your homework first…
Read More3 Tips for Writing 10-K Annual Reports for U.S. Corporations
Writing Form 10-K Annual Reports is a lucrative niche that you should consider if you have a finance or investment background or feel comfortable with terminology of economics. Here is a great web site where you can go and take a look at hundreds of annual reports filed each year by U.S. SEC (Securities and…
Read MoreAuthorIt SaaS Cloud Enterprise-Level Technical Writing Platform – Selected Features
© Ugur Akinci Here are a few really cool AuthorIt features that caught my eye during a recent webinar demonstration by the company founder and CEO Paul Trotter. Searching for Content AuthorIt is a powerful structured-authoring editor that allows you to use the same chunk of content many times over. So searching for reusable content…
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How to Insert a Placeholder to a MS Word Document for a Book or Article Citation
Introduction Insert a placeholder to an MS Word document when, while working on the document, you would not have the citations at your fingertips. Problem Yet if you stop to make a search for the citations you may lose your rhythm and momentum. Solution So it makes sense to keep going full-steam ahead and to…
Read MoreThe Difference a Comma Makes
© Ugur Akinci Technical writers must watch their punctuation like a hawk because of the dramatic difference a misplaced punctuation mark makes. Here is a great example from the Understanding Uncertainty web site: “how unlikely the result is due to chance” versus “how unlikely the result is, due to chance” Click here to read the…
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