Basic Indexing Workshop  

Although we all agree on the importance of a good index, many technical writers find themselves in the position of having to produce an index in a short amount of time with no training or experience. If you have ever been in this situation or anticpate ever being in this situation, this workshop is for you. You’ll learn the six steps required to produce an index that is thorough and easy to use. Then you’ll practice two of those steps: selecting index entries and refining the rough draft of the index. Finally you’ll compare your individual efforts to the rest of the group to see how you did, what more you could have done, and what you can suggest to the rest of the group.

Winsberg, Freya Y. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Indexing

Basic International Technical Communication  

International technical communication is the profession of the present and most definitely of the future. Businesses around the world need technical communicators who are skilled in communicating with a multicultural audience and who are comfortable working as members of international teams. This workshop introduces you to some basic skills you need to master to be successful as an international technical communicator. The skills this workshop focuses on are: performing an international user analysis, identifying cultural bias, generating a glossary for translators, and designing a page with translation and the international user in mind.

Hoft, Nancy L. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>TC>International

Basic Marketing Techniques  

Effective marketing is key to your success. Marketing is based on your image and message, both of which can be delivered in a myriad of methods.

Maggiani, Rich. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>TC>Marketing

Basic Search Engine Optimization Guide And Tips

Search engine optimization or SEO is very important to get your website listed in search engines. Even if this is the first website you have built there are a few basic and easy steps that will help you with optimizing your website without being a pro.

DevBay (2005). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Basic WinHelp for Beginners  

The first time you create a Windows Help file can be very confusing. This paper should help reduce confusion by explaining the basic WinHelp concepts and components, and then walking you through the procedure.

Van Sant, Carol J. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Online>Help

The Basics of Book Profits

Most writers have no idea how much money they can expect when their book is published. The formular, however, is fairly straightforward. To begin with, a writer generally receives an advance. An advance is payment, in advance, based on the expected initial earnings of the book. Royalties (ranging from 4% to 8% in most cases) are generally based on the cover price of the book, but that does not include books that are discounted or remaindered. So, for the sake of argument, say you sold 20,000 full-price copies of a paperback priced at $7 (I know it would more likely be $6.95 but I am going to use round numbers.) If your royalty percentage were a generous 8% you would make a total of $11,200.

Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2004). Articles>Writing>Publishing>Writing

The Basics of Quality  

With constantly changing deadlines and last minute major revisions, how can technical writers ever hope to create quality documents? Members of the STC Quality Special Interest Group (SIG) will present some basic concepts that will provide insights into ways you can improve the quality of your documentation. They will look at what is meant by 'quality documentation', how documentation quality can be measured, how quality can be implemented in documentation processes, how ISO 9000 requirements can be adapted to help improve the documentation process, and how the relationship between developers and writers can impact documentation quality.

Rupel, Roberta A., Lori H. Fisher, Donald S. Lenk, Ralph E. Robinson and Richard Colvin. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>Quality>Technical Writing

Bass Curves for the Diffusion of Innovations

Uptake of hypertext is likely to happen somewhat differently than the standard Bass curve. First, the market for hypertext use is highly dependent on the number of people who have computers with certain minimum capabilities (typically at least a graphical user interface; for WWW use it is also necessary to have Internet access). Second, the influence of other hypertext users is almost certainly not linear.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1995). Articles>Human Computer Interaction

Bastien PROT: XPS une alternative au format PDF

XPS (XML Paper Specification) est un format de fichier électronique à présentation fixe comme le PDF du concurrent Adobe qui préserve la mise en forme du document et permet le partage des fichiers sans perte dinformation. Le format XPS garantit que, lorsquun fichier est affiché en ligne ou imprimé, il conserve le format souhaité.

Rédacteur Technique, Le (2007). (French) Articles>Document Design>Standards>XML

Battle of the Wizards: Dojo Vs. Microsoft

Two wizards are compared. One client script from DOJO and the other server component from Microsoft. Both fo them work exceedingly well in IE 7.0. Dojo wizard looks smashing.

Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. DevShed (2007). Articles>Computing>Programming>JavaScript

Battlecat Then, Battlecat Now: Temporal Shifts, Hyperlinking and Database Subjectivities

Like all media forms, the blog is not transparent. The technological code of the software contains affordances that filter and, in part, determine the constitution of the private/public Self represented in any weblog. And so, what kind of Self (or Selves) are made possible or enabled by typical blogging practice?

Jarrett, Kylie. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Baumol's Disease: Is There a Cure?

Baumol would never have expected in 1967 that a technological innovation like the internet would make it possible to create a sealed-off labor force in a third-world country.

Hackos, Bill. Center for Information-Development Management (2005). Articles>Technology>History

Be An Author, Not a Writer: Breaking Into Retail-Market Computer Book Publishing  

Many experienced technical communicators already have the skills and experience required to be successful authors of retail-market computer books. What they generally lack, however, is an understanding of the retail computer book publishing industry: the roles of the various players, options and techniques for landing that all-important first contract, navigating the ins and outs of money and contracts, developing book proposals, and working on their own. By learning more about the industry, technical communicators gain two things: an increased chance of becoming a first-time author and, more importantly, whether this is an appropriate career choice for them.

Benz, Christopher J. and Michelle Corbin Nichols. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Writing>Publishing

Be Concise

When giving overview information, be concise. Save the details and flowing language for those that want them or have the time, but don't slow down the skimmer. This doesn't mean skip the details, just keep them from people who don't need them.

Bricklin, Dan. Good Documents (1998). Articles>Writing>Workplace>Technical Writing

Be Prepared: Fill the Gaps in Your Photoshop Know-How

It's next to impossible for one person to know the ins and outs of every single facet of Photoshop. With that in mind, we present three video tutorials to plug a variety of holes in your Photoshop knowledge.

Perkins, Chad. Creative Pro (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)

The three main guidelines for writing for the Web are: be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication; write for scannability: don't require users to read long continuous blocks of text; use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Be Your Own Private Eye  

Your document won't print? Don't panic - here's a systematic guide to troubleshooting the problem.

Powers, Lynn. Adobe Magazine (1995). Articles>Computing

Bearing the Burden: Small Firms and the Patent System  

The popular conception of the patent system is one of mad inventors with ludicrous inventions and equally absurd expectations that the product of their years of pottering in the garden shed will change the world. Precisely the same system is the bulwark of strategy in some of the world's most powerful companies, notoriously in the pharmaceutical industry, but now also in the world's IT industry. Can the one instrument serve such diverse purposes? Certainly those for whom the patent system is of critical strategic importance think so for they frequently declare that it benefits the independent inventor and the small firm. They insist that the patent system encourages the innovation of the weak as well as the strong, and that society is much the richer for this innovation. This article considers just who does benefit from the patent system and then turns to the other side of the coin, the costs of the patent system. Most discussion of the system seems not so much to deny the existence of costs as to ignore them. Yet, the costs would seem to be considerable and their distribution as uneven as that of the benefits. Those who reap most benefits from the patent system are not those who incur most costs, and while benefits are finely focussed, costs are much more widely distributed. The greatest cost of all would seem to be borne by society as a whole in terms of damage done to innovation, which is curious given that the fundamental purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation for the benefit of society as a whole.

Macdonald, Stuart. JILT (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Patents

Beatrice Santiccioli: Specializing in Color

A visual designer discusses why Swatch, watercolors and cooking can inspire the design of color. Louise Sandhaus draws out how Beatrice Santiccioli came to be the Queen of Color.

Sandhaus, Louise. AIGA (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Interviewing

Review: Beautiful Evidence    

Beautiful Evidence is Edward Tufte's fourth and latest book and both follows and diverges from the directions established with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte, 1983), Envisioning Information (Tufte, 1990), and Visual Explanations (Tufte, 1997). Visual Display examined pictures of numbers, Envisioning explored pictures of nouns, and Visual Explanations addressed pictures of verbs. Beautiful Evidence foregoes the 'pictures of' approach and instead establishes the role of evidence as the foundation of reasoning. In some ways, this latest book might have been better positioned as the first book because of its efforts to explain interplays of understanding and reasoning.

Penrose, John M. JBC (2007). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design>Usability

The Beauty of Simplicity

We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. In an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create.

Tischler, Linda. Search-This (2006). Articles>Usability>Technology

Becoming a Journal Author   

This session will help participants understand how to write and submit a manuscript for publication in Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, its audience, and suggestions for choosing topics, doing research, and preparing a manuscript.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>Publishing

Becoming a Journal Peer Reviewer   

This session will help participants understand the process for reviewing manuscripts submitted to

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Publishing>Editing

Beetle Bailey and Presentation Skills

An audience, whether it is one person or many, wants speakers to provide maximum relevant information, delivered in minimum time and in the clearest possible terms, centered on the needs and concerns of the audience.

Tracy, Larry. Klariti (2005). Articles>Presentations>Rhetoric

Before the Interview

People often turn down the chance to be interviewed because they're nervous, or afraid they'll say the wrong thing. Instead, think of the interview as a golden opportunity for you to convey your message. If perceptions about you, your school, or youth in general have been wrong in the past, this is your chance to set the record straight.

Media-Awareness.ca. Articles>Interviewing>Video