Book Review: Conversation and Community by Anne Gentle

Anne Gentle, senior technical writer and author of the JustWriteClick blog, has just published her first book: Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne graciously sent me a copy, and I’ve put together the following review. The major premise of this book is that expectations for documentation have shifted from bookshelf to search.…

Read More

The Importance of Using the Right Words

© 2009 Ugur Akinci Using the right words is so critical in communications in general and technical writing in particular. The wrong word can take the conversation to a totally unintended direction, sometimes with humorous and other times with not-so-humorous results. Here is an example… As I was jogging the other day I was listening…

Read More

A Great Manual from Open Office: "Creating Large Documents"

The free writing suite Open Office has come up with a great free PDF document that should be of great help for all writers generating long (over 50 pages) documents.  (I’d like to thank my reader George L. for bringing this free resource to my attention.) The 48-page “Creating Large Documents” is written in an…

Read More

Do Your Verbs Agree with Your Subjects?

© 2009-2010 Ugur Akinci It’s a fundamental rule of English grammar: your VERB must agree with the SUBJECT of your sentence. Why I’m addressing this very basic rule? The reason is, when violated, it can have disastrous consequences in technical writing. First the RULE: The garage [Main SUBJECT] where he kept [auxiliary VERB] his antique…

Read More

Sharing Content – Can It Hurt Your Web Site Traffic?

© 2010 Ugur Akinci Can sharing content “too much” be a problem for your web site traffic? I admit, I had this paranoia about sharing “too much” information with my visitors years ago but not any more. Because the more you share, the more your readers will accept you as an authority in your field,…

Read More

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…

Read More

Which Way Your Sentences Branch – Right or Left?

Ugur Akinci Try right-branching sentences in your technical documents for higher comprehension. Right-branching sentences start with the SUBJECT, follow it with PRIMARY VERB (or sometimes the other way around if the verb is in imperative/order mode), and then end with modifiers and other relevant information. What branches off to the right of the subject and…

Read More

What a Technical Writer Should Know About DocBook?

© 2009 Ugur Akinci DocBook is a set of tools for implementing XML (Extended Markup Language)-based structured documentation. It is developed back in 1991 and is widely used today by those technical writers who generate single-sourced documentation. It is especially well suited for software, hardware and networking documentation. A DocBook set includes the DocBook DTD…

Read More

How to Use Wikis for Your Technical Writing Projects

Today I’d like to talk about how you can use a Wiki for your technical document project. A wiki (which means “quick” in Hawaiian)  is a collaborative writing software with which you can set up a “wiki site” as well. With wiki’s powerful database, editing and messaging functionalities you can accomplish much for your technical…

Read More