Posts Tagged ‘Technical Writing’
Book Review – Guidelines for Developing Instructions
Book by Kay Inaba, Stuart O. Parsons, and Robert Smillie Introduction This is a small but information-packed (and rather expensive) 136-page book for all technical writers who are writing procedural guides and/or maintenance and troubleshooting manuals for mechanical systems. The authors clearly have a lot of experience in documenting mechanical systems and working on military…
Read MoreAre You a Journalist? How About Technical Writing to Make Ends Meet?
(Copyright-free image courtesy of Unsplash dot com) © Ugur Akinci Journalism is exciting but tough. I should know. I’ve been a journalist for 4 years in mid-90s. I loved every minute of it but had a hard time making ends meet. I was an NPC (National Press Club) member reporter accredited both with the U.S.…
Read MoreWhich Text Editor to Use for Technical Writing – Adobe FrameMaker or Microsoft Word?
© 2008-2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writers have been asking this question to themselves for the good part of the last 15 years. The short answer is this – if you’re writing a short memo, letter, or a short document, MS Word would be just fine. No problem. I use MS Word in that fashion all…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – How to Design a Twitter Background to Market Yourself as a Technical Writer
I hope you’re on Twitter already. It’s a great social networking service through which you can market your technical writing and documentation services with great efficiency. You can increase the effectiveness of your Twitter account by custom designing a new background instead of the default background that your Twitter account comes with. A great majority…
Read MoreTechnical Book Review – "Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists"
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Barry J. Rosenberg is definitely one of the better technical writing books out there. You can tell it was written by an industry professional who himself spent quite a few years in the “trenches,” trying to solve one pesky documentation problem after…
Read MoreThree Sources of Employment For Technical Writers
Basically, there are three ways to get a job as a technical writer: 1) On your own, as an independent freelancer. 2) Through a job agency, as a contractor. 3) As a company employee. Each offers different benefits and advantages, depending on your skills as a technical writer, your background and your personality. ——————————————————– 1)…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – How to Use Twitter to Market Yourself As a Technical Writer
If you’re to make a single change in the way you market your services as a freelance technical writer, it should be to get on the Twitter – in case you still haven’t. It’s addictive, informative, and fun too. Twitter is a free social networking service through which you can exchange 140-character messages with the…
Read MoreDo You Just "Shutdown" Or "Shut Down" a System? "Sign In" Or "Sign-In"?
There are terminology errors in technical writing that even some experienced technical writers commit from time to time. The words we use when describing how to turn a system on and off, or how to enter and leave a location, are ripe for such inadvertent errors. Here are the basics: “Shutdown” is a noun. “Shut…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – How to Use the PDF Format Correctly for Print and Online Publications
PDF (which stands for “Portable Document Format”) is one of the most widely used document formats in technical writing. PDF rose out of a real need to read documents created by proprietary software on all kinds of different operating systems and browsers. An advertisement illustration created by Illustrator could not be viewed by the receiver…
Read MoreAnatomy of a Technical Editing Process
Here is the anatomy of a technical editing process. This ORIGINAL SENTENCE is from a software user’s guide: “A prompt will occur prior to deletion that confirms the operator’s wish to delete the selected item and once confirmation occurs the deletion is made final.” Here is a BETTER version: “A warning message displays, prompting the…
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