#20067
Writing and Editing Stem Overview 
The Writing and Editing Stem of the 42nd Annual STC Conference is designed to provide sessions that speak to the questions of technical communicators today and that also remind us to 'stick to the basics' of our craft(s). In a world of to 're-imagine' the audience and gain new ever-changing technologies, we must perspectives. Find out how to motivate your accommodate both a diverse audience and a audience to learn and then keep ‘em coming back! diverse media. Our goal is to explore (proven and new) methodologies and ideas that can enhance our writing and editing skills and philosophies as we enter the 21st century.
Baxley, Deborah Lewis. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Writing>Editing
#19019
Writing Consistently Across Media: Ten Proofreading Tips
Last time I wrote about consistency in online writing. Soon after, I received an email from Leslie Drechsler, a reader in Tustin, CA: 'As a Marketing Communications Specialist, I'd love to hear your ideas on how to successfully implement consistency in an established business,' she wrote. 'I thought developing a company style guide would solve the problem. But perhaps there are other ways to approach it. 'Perhaps this could be the subject of another article.' Here's that article, Leslie.
Henning, Kathy. ClickZ (2001). Articles>Editing>Style Guides>Writing
#21685
One of the keys to effective technical writing is to write, edit and re-write. Once you have completed the first draft, you will need to review it several times to identify errors and inconsistencies in the text.
#23345
Writing Programs and the English Department
A couple of years ago John Gerber, in an article in the ADE Bulletin, urged a broadened definition of 'literacy,' one that would encompass all study relating to linguistic artifacts, from the most elementary reading and writing to the most differentiated scholarship and composing. Nearly all college English departments do include much of this broad range, but the inclusion is rarely an integration. Instead, there's the English major and the freshman composition program and the creative-writing courses and, sometimes, the courses for nonmajors: film, popular culture, folklore; business and technical writing; and so forth. In large departments different faculty members may specialize in one or another of these units, and the chairman, who is supposed to be running the whole six-ring circus, can scarcely get the different sorts to talk to one another. What integration occurs begins and ends with the yearly departmental cocktail party.
Johnson, Paula. ADE Bulletin (1979). Articles>Editing>Writing>Collaboration
#20189
Large manuals are expensive to write, produce, and ship, and may make a product seem mare diflcult or complex than it really is. Shorter manuals can decrease telephone support calls, provide a challenge to the writer, and save time and money. With careful planning and preparation, diJjCerent writing and design techniques, and participation in product design, writers can shorten manuals and make users more willing to read them.
Sommerville, Heather M. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Editing>Writing
#20800
Writing, Editing and Designing: a Unified Process
What's in it for me? That's what magazine readers must see at first glance, or they will flip on by. Winning their attention requires thoughtful blending of words and design from the beginning of the publication process.
Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Writing>Editing>Visual Rhetoric
#34212
Once the main text has been written, you edit it. Editing means breaking text into sub-documents; pointing out connections to other texts; making sure the document as a whole is in good shape; adding indices and outlines. Editing doesn't necessarily happen after the first text has been written - I mix those stages all the time - but it deserves to be thought of as an independent discipline, because the problems it deals with are different. Most of what people do on the World Wide Web is really editing, not writing.
Technische Universität Berlin. Articles>Web Design>Editing>Writing
#34443
Do I Really Need a Style Guide?
So, after all, I must follow those infernal style guides. I am straight-jacketed. Am I not?
Palagummi, Sharada. Indus (2009). Articles>Editing>Style Guides>Writing
#34746
#34840
The Construction of Author Voice by Editorial Board Members 
Studies of blind manuscript review have illustrated that readers often form impressions of or speculate about unknown authors' identities in the manuscript review task. In this article, the authors extend that work by examining the discursive and nondiscursive features that play a role in readers' active construction of author voice. Through a survey completed by 70 editorial board members of six journals in applied linguistics and rhetoric and composition, the authors identify quantitative and qualitative trends in reviewers' practices regarding voice construction. Findings indicate that many readers do build impressions of an author's identity when reviewing anonymous manuscripts and that the rhetorical nature of the review task may lead readers to attend more to some discursive features than to others.
Tardy, Christine M. and Paul Kei Matsuda. Written Communication (2009). Articles>Writing>Editing>Publishing
#34884
Misplaced Modifier – Even WSJ Falls For It
“Misplaced modifier” is a frequently committed logical error that even the most prominent publications fall for occasionally. Solution? Move the modifier clause right next to the subject of the sentence.
Technical Communication Center (2007). Articles>Writing>Editing>Grammar
#35090
Be vicious when you edit. Vicious. Follow these recommendations with zealous fervor. They help your writing say what it should in a way we’ll understand.
Govella, Austin. Thinking and Making (2009). Articles>Writing>Editing>Minimalism
#35211
Do I Really Need a Style Guide?
Style guides recommend certain styles. In the domain of technical communication, we refer to guides for writing style, presentation of content in user documentation and technical documents, and graphical user interface of software and web sites.
Palagummi, Sharada. Indus (2009). Articles>Style Guides>Editing>Writing
#35710
Writing Great Documentation: You Need an Editor
All good writers have a dirty little secret: they’re not really that good at writing. Their editors just make it seem that way. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve mastered the language; nobody, even grammar geeks, gets this stuff right on the first pass. If you really want to produce great documentation, it needs to be edited.
Kaplan-Moss, Jacob. Jacobian (2009). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Technical Editing
#35716
Unlocking the Special Powers of the English Language
Editing really is a wonder– it’s like a multiplication of the writer’s brain, a dialogue among various copies of the author. First-draft author is an admirable workman but a bit of a hack; he writes down whatever pops into his head. Second-draft author is slower-paced but has a clearer eye for how the larger story structure fits together, or at least how it should fit once he’s done with it. Third-draft author has a remarkable knack for turning familiar and overused phrases into fresh, surprising stuff, by masticating each line. And so on. All these guys team up to make something great, and none of them could have done it alone.
Deck, Jeff. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Writing>Editing
#35825
What’s More Important, Content or Process? 
While style guidelines can be useful for maintaining consistency across a set (or several sets) of documentation, the editors that I worked with viewed the style guidelines as sacrosanct. Any deviation, no matter how small, was punishable by a nasty email and a sharply worded note to the offending writer’s manager.
Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Editing>Style Guides>Writing
