Analysis of Tools Used in the UK by Technical Communicators

During March and April 2003, Cherryleaf carried out an online survey into the current trends in technical communication. One of the questions we asked was: Which software tools do you personally use to do your job? The respondents were able to select more than one tool from the list provided. We filtered our results to find the most popular software tools used by technical communicators in the UK.

Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Research>Software>United Kingdom

A Discussion and Annotated Bibliography of Research on the Use of Style Checkers in the Computer-Assisted Writing Classroom  

Style checkers are software programs designed as writing tools. Despite their popularity in both academic and industrial settings, the effectiveness and advisability of using the technology is still unproven. A main issue is the ability of users to determine whether the program's suggestions are useful and to ignore inappropriate advice. Freshmen composition students, beginning technical writing students, and advanced technical writing students were asked to mark all suggestions made by RightWriter 4.0 as 'useful,' 'wrong,' or 'ignored.' Results show that all students ignored approximately 50% of the suggestions; however, freshman writers perceived a larger percentage of the suggestions that they ignored to be wrong rather than just not useful.

Moosally, Michelle J. and Roland D. Nerd. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Research>Education>Software