http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Girill,_T.R A bibliography of works by Girill, T.R in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Girill,_T.R http://tc.eserver.org/35120.html http://tc.eserver.org/35120.html An organized kit of technical-writing exercises, guidelines, activities, and strategies refined and tested in real high-school classes, with notes and comparisons to help teachers borrow and adapt them. Also used for teacher professional development at the Edward Teller Education Center. http://tc.eserver.org/35121.html http://tc.eserver.org/35121.html The value of learning effective nonfiction nonnarrative writing ("technical writing") for middle- and high-school students has been cited repeatedly in official and unofficial academic standards starting in the early 1990s. http://tc.eserver.org/26855.html http://tc.eserver.org/26855.html Explores how basic, scaffolded technical-writing exercises can help ESL students gain cognitive maturity, practice science literacy, improve their note taking, and use text signals and science idioms more effectively. http://tc.eserver.org/19505.html http://tc.eserver.org/19505.html Explains how workplace principles of effective scientific communication also have an important role in literacy outreach programs for schools. http://tc.eserver.org/19506.html http://tc.eserver.org/19506.html Summarizes psychological research on why some people learn better from examples than others do, and applies the results to improve software documentation and literacy outreach projects. http://tc.eserver.org/14592.html http://tc.eserver.org/14592.html Linked to this page are 6 high-school-level exercises that teach (through worked and scaffolded examples) how to write good technical descriptions. Also included is a set of description-writing guidelines on which these exercises depend. The summary table below links to two versions of each exercise: * A plain version suitable for classroom use as is, and * An annotated version that: * spells out the goal of each exercise and the writing issues that it addresses, * compares the exercise with others in this set, * suggests effective, relevant teaching strategies, as well as extended activities, and * notes the specific 1998 California English-Language Arts content standard(s) that the exercise most strongly supports. http://tc.eserver.org/14591.html http://tc.eserver.org/14591.html The STC Code for Communicators requires us 'to communicate technical information truthfully...'. Such truthfulness has two related but distinct aspects, honesty and candor. I have never been asked to falsify technical claims in documentation (honesty), but I have occasionally been asked to withhold true claims about software that, if known to users, would surely affect how they interpret or apply that software (candor). The century ahead will increasingly demand user documentation that is candid as well as honest. http://tc.eserver.org/14593.html http://tc.eserver.org/14593.html This paper advocates an often-neglected search-support technique, approximate or 'fuzzy' matching of user search terms. When properly deployed, fuzzy matching can significantly enhance the benefits of other, more common approaches to end-user answer retrieval from online reference collections. We compare crude with more sophisticated approximation techniques to explain how astute fuzzy-match software can convert many different near-miss situations (such as those involving faulty prefixes or suffixes, character misplacement, nonstandard word stems, or unanticipated redescription of concepts) into more adequate results. We also suggest practical ways to overcome fuzzy matching's own major drawbacks (namely, problems with search speed, search imprecision, and misinterpretation of search results). The resulting analysis clarifies how to deploy fuzzy matching for maximum effectiveness. We conclude that appropriate fuzzy matching enables more frequent, more flexible search success than do ordinary retrieval-improvement techniques used without it. http://tc.eserver.org/14594.html http://tc.eserver.org/14594.html This paper tells how Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory enriched CRI's online documentation set by publishing local manuals using the same SGML DTD used by CRI and delivered using (a more sophisticated version of) the same World Wide Web server (DynaWeb 3.0). This approach supports flexible local content and styles, yet integrates local and CRI manuals through one access mechanism and user interface. We explain the basic strategy involved, compare the benefits of this approach with three alternatives, and discuss the problems to which it gives rise. http://tc.eserver.org/14585.html http://tc.eserver.org/14585.html Educational materials on SGML fall into three broad categories. An evaluative abstract is available for each item on the chart. http://tc.eserver.org/13311.html http://tc.eserver.org/13311.html These guidelines and 14 scaffolded exercises respond to the unmet need for a psychologically solid, work-relevant way to learn technical writing by students who are NOT facile writers already.