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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…

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Three 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)…

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Anatomy 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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