Carolina Communique

Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools

Review of 'Book Review: Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools' by Kit Brown, Brenda Huettner, and Char James-Tanny.

Documents That No Project Cannot Be Without

Short deadlines force project teams to quickly design, test, and release the product with little or no design documentation. If these documents are written, they generally are not well-written and are not comprehensive. The fact of the matter is that most project teams do not have enough staff to design the product, let alone write and manage documentation. This situation creates an ideal opportunity for technical writers to assist the project team in more ways than writing a user guide.

Looking At GUI Libraries: Spotlight On Infragistics

As a Graphical User Interface (GUI) programmer, I have many interface development tools to choose from. Over the years, my development environment changes to accommodate my needs. This often includes learning new languages and the tools that go with them.

Emphasize This!

Technical communicators tend to be problem solvers. We ask ourselves, 'How can I make this better?' We don't want our instruction material to simply be serviceable; we want it to help make our readers' lives easier. One way we do that is by anticipating mistakes that users might make if they don't read carefully. We use various techniques to emphasize material that could otherwise be overlooked. Some effective means of drawing the reader's eye to important material are presented below. Note that this article doesn't address safety messages. For proper use of safety messages, consult your corporate guidelines and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

An Almost Final Farewell to Desktop Word Processing

The era of desktop publishing is over, and I must bid Microsoft Word and several other desktop applications good-bye. In case you think I'm singling out Microsoft, it's not just MS Word, but also OpenOffice, GoogleOffice, or any application that makes what we used to call 'documents'. Nowadays, I'm simply using a wiki for collaborative information sharing and a blog for online reporting.

Developing a Personal Tagline

Part of professional development involves recognizing your strengths and learning how to express it to others. It is a helpful exercise to develop a tagline for yourself, in the same way that professionals in a previous generation were encouraged to develop a mission statement. With shortening attention spans, today's professional needs only a few-word tagline to fit in the sound bite of management's smaller time slots. Beyond what Chris Benz would call shameless self-promotion, having a personal tagline keeps your career development focused and on track.

Double Take

When I peer-review a four-page document and insert the word the seventeen times, I wonder: Is this what my company is paying me to do? Am I truly adding value for my customers?

E-Globalization

Globalization involves the process to adapt a company's product and message to meet the varied expectations of markets around the world.

Is Consistency Boring?

What do customers want from our software and documentation? They want to accomplish tasks, and to obtain information about tasks, as quickly and painlessly as possible. Do they also expect to be entertained along the way? No, not when there is work to be done. Years of usability analysis in the software industry indicates very clearly that clarity and ease-of-use is topmost on the minds of software users.

It's All Relative

When it comes to relative pronouns, incomplete knowledge may lead to frustration and confusion. The pronouns that, which, who, and what serve as relative pronouns when they introduce a relative (or subordinate) clause.

Pith and Vinegar: What Do You Do for a Living?

Rather than authoring printed manuals and on-line help panels, technical communicators should be involved in or leading projects that make them unnecessary.

Taking Risks with a New Online Help Tool

Some might not think that converting FrameMaker content into online help and user documentation would involve taking risks. In this article, we tell our story of what risks were involved with one of my recent projects, how we overcame them, and what benefits we reaped by using state-of-the-art technology.

Writing an Effective Letter to the Editor

There are many reasons to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Whatever your motivation, this article helps you to write a letter that gets published.

America the Beautiful

Writers of English have choices. Most every word we commit to paper (or its electronic equivalent) has a synonym

Key Content: Developing a Personal Tagline

It is a helpful exercise to develop a tagline for yourself, in the same way that professionals in a previous generation were encouraged to develop a mission statement. With shortening attention spans, today's professional needs only a few-word tagline to fit in the sound bite of management's smaller time slots.

Taking Risks with a New Online Help Tool

Too Many Pieces

Do you ever think about how much time you spend tackling process issues and tools issues? The tools, as advanced and automated as they are, will not fix all our problems. But we have to work with what we have, and automate as much of the production and maintenance of our content as possible.

Is Technical Writing Your Calling?

An essay exploring whether technical writing is a 'calling.'

It's All Relative

Paper at Its Peak: The Myth of the Myth of the Paperless Office

Anyone who writes for a living can, like me, describe a long love-hate relationship with paper as the conveyer of the written word. There's something physically appealing about putting pen to paper, as there is about picking up and reading a well-produced bound document.

Acrobat Features Turbocharge the Online Review Process

One of the more tedious and error-prone processes in technical writing is that of collaborative document review. Even when documents are shared electronically, keeping track of comments, suggestions, and changes contributed by multiple team members can be exasperating. Too often errors due to collaborative review lead to delays, missed deadlines, misunderstandings and an inaccurate final document.

Developing Technical Curiosity: A Marketable Skill

Every technical writer should have strong writing skills. Just as important, in my judgment, is a keen sense of technical curiosity. As a hiring manager, I look for it in every job applicant I interview. If you do not have this sense naturally, you can develop it.

Is Technical Communication Like Riding a Bicycle?

I'm sure many of you have heard the expression, 'It's just like riding a bicycle,' which is applied to something that once learned, is just about impossible to forget. The same may be said for driving a manual transmission automobile; I can go years without driving one, but can easily drive one when I need to. (With the exception of VW bugs, whose clutches I have never managed to master.)

Medical Writers Give Career Changers Plans of Action

Those who are interested in breaking into medical writing received the inside scoop from L. Megan Day and Dr. Susan Dakin, the panelists at the chapter meeting on January 9 at Dreyfus Auditorium at Research Triangle Institute. Day has a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's degree in anatomy and has written for pharmaceutical companies for 10 years. Dakin has a bachelor's degree in biology and psychology and a Ph.D. in zoology. Self-employed since 1984, her specialties are scientific writing and proposal writing.

Structured Authoring and XML: Part One

Implementing structured authoring with XML allows organizations to create better content. The addition of hierarchy and metadata to content improves reuse and content management. These benefits, however, must be weighed against the time and money required to implement a structured authoring approach. The business case is compelling for larger writing organizations; they will be the first to adopt structured authoring. Over time, improvements in available tools will reduce the cost of implementing structured authoring and make it affordable for smaller organizations.

Structured Authoring and XML: Part Two

In a structured authoring environment, authors create documents by assembling elements and text in an order permitted by the structure definition document. You might think of structured authoring as being similar to template-based authoring with a strict template. Authors do not assign formatting; the formatting is automatically assigned based on the structure of the document. Formatting may differ for different output media.

The Synergy between Human Factors and Technical Communication

The human factors specialist and the technical communicator find themselves making similar decisions or weighing similar issues. For example, often it is difficult to decide when to use symbols versus words. Sometimes you cannot shortcut and use pictures because pictures do not convey enough information.

Web Design for Small Companies: Pretend that You Have a Programmer

Now that the World Wide Web is an established means of business communication and the technology has evolved with it, site designs are looking slicker than ever. You may find that your own website--homegrown or corporate--could use a 'facelift.' But facelifts don't always have to involve the newest technology; sometimes the extra stuff that the techies love actually interferes with good design. Remember the animated Flash intros that so many sites pushed on you upon first visit? It's impressive the first time you see it... and really annoying after a couple of viewings, especially when all you wanted to do was get some information and get out.

Writers in the Classroom

What does it take to get a newsletter out each month? Well, I spend about 16-20 hours a month on the newsletter at home, which doesn't include copying.

Accounting: A+ in Your Column

To save yourself heartache, introduce the accounting department to the idea of measuring the total value returned minus the cost of documentation. After all, if the accounting department understands one thing, it's saving (or attempting to) save money. If you can show them that, yes, you did do fewer pages, but it saved three days of your time and managerial review, four thousand dollars in printing, and many hours of customer service dealing with disgruntled users, the department may be more understanding.

Automating Production with WebWorks AutoMap

WebWorks AutoMap is an extremely useful tool for performing unattended documentation builds. Out of the box, AutoMap can generate reasonable documents. By adding the power of scripting, the results can be amazing.

Behind the Scenes of Creating Value

There's a lot of volunteer work that that goes on behind the scenes by chapter members to create value. Today, I'm inviting you to get involved so you can take part in and benefit from creating value.

Benefits Too Great to Miss

To get the most out of your STC membership--take action. Join a committee, write an article for the newsletter, go to a workshop, volunteer for the chapter conference.

Connectfulness

In the same way that the word 'truthiness' is not a real word but is gaining usage in our culture, so the word 'connectfulness' offers us in the professional arena a way to express an important aspect of our work. Just as truthiness says more than accuracy and is friendlier than truthfulness, so connectfulness says more than networked and is friendlier and more inclusive than connectedness.

Copyright Do's and Don'ts

Copyright is extremely important in our economy today. Intellectual property fuels our economy to a great extent: 1/3 of the market of US stock, and 42% of gross domestic product. A copyright protects authorship, either now known or later developed. There are fundamental concepts of copyright: it needs to be in a tangible form and it needs to be eligible.

Dangling for Position

Dangling modifiers can be humorous for the reader, but humiliating for the writer. They're insidious, creeping into our prose and undermining our sentence structure. But they're easy to find if you know what to look for.

The Documentation Elephant

As technical writers, we work more online than ever before. We are beginning to work with documentation in a new way, so that we can repurpose content and free it from the restrictions imposed by any particular delivery mechanism. We no longer solely create paper-publishable documents. We do not, as yet, have a good word for what we do; we do not have a single word or phrase that summarizes the effort or the deliverables. Nor can we use any single existing lexicon because the concepts are new. This difficulty is a natural consequence of the inter-networked world in which we work, where information is delivered multiple ways for diverse audiences. But let us look at the phrases currently growing in popular usage that refer to this effort.

Documentation Quality Metrics

To implement any continuous improvement process, you have to measure your progress. This is where metrics come in. Have you been struggling to create a process for measuring your technical documentation? If so, this article provides the information you need to get started.

Documenting in N Dimensions

It is commonplace to find information through the Web, but the use of the Web for technical communication is still uncommon. What the competition entries made me realize is that in this networked world, the places where we find information are no longer one or two dimensional. Communication is no longer simply about words on a page (or on a screen). Technical information is now accessed through a multidimensional cyberspace.

Double Take

If you write documentation for products that can be dangerous if misused, ambiguity is scarier than rush hour traffic on I-40. If you already know what the sentence means, it's difficult to perceive that it could be taken to mean something else. By stringently applying rules of grammar, you help eliminate potential ambiguity even when you don't perceive it. Technical content is difficult enough to navigate; give the reader a clear path so he can focus on the journey instead of the road.

Exporting Technical Writing Jobs

Traditionally, contractors have played an important role in the technical writing field by providing specific expertise, thereby allowing companies to focus on their core competencies. Contactors have made it possible for companies to add temporary personnel when needed ' an important benefit in a field where work output peaks periodically.

Finding "A Winning Community" at the STC 53rd Annual Conference

An STC conference is a unique type of education that supplements the formal theory and ideology one can learn in school. It is a place to interact with and learn from people with a range of professions, viewpoints, and expertise. It is a place to experience passion and vision for the field as a part of an international community. But most of all, it is a place filled with resources just waiting to be used by the next eager technical communicator.

The Humble Hyphen

The hyphen serves a single function. It joins things together: syllables of a word separated at the end of a line; two words used as a compound; or a modifier and the word it describes (when the combination itself is used as a modifier). But for the latter two functions, a hyphen isn't always needed. So how do you decide?

Improving Technical Reviews

Improving technical reviews, when subject matter experts, or SMEs, review content for technical accuracy, is a challenge every technical communicator faces sometime during their career. Every year, journal articles are published, presentations are made, and discussions are initiated on this very topic. Most of them conclude that SMEs are difficult. It's your job to bribe, cajole, or coerce a better review out of your SME. I don't agree.

An Intranet Story

An intranet, in contrast to the Internet, is in-house and serves the employees of an enterprise. Although intranet pages may link to the Internet, an intranet is not accessed by the public. The intranet was fertile ground for web-savvy geeks like me to till and plant.

Managing Valuable Chapter Content

One of the ways that STC chapters can improve their value proposition to present and prospective members is to make available some of the best content that is created by and owned by the chapter members.

Mentoring as a Two-Way Street

In a profession that does not have clear discipline boundaries or many built-in mentorships with professors and internships, most professionals in technical communication depend on fellow professionals as mentors.

A SIG Transformation: Past, Present, and Future

A recent discussion about the STC's Technical Editing Special Interest Group (TE SIG) provided insights into the evolving role of communities of interest in the Society. At a meeting of the Carolina Chapter's local TE SIG, Diane Feldman, who is the manager of the Society-level SIG, provided members with an update on SIG activities.

Squiggles

Thomas Mann described the writer as somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Nowhere is this truer than for comma use: while most folks float along blithely putting commas in or leaving them out at whim, we agonize over every squiggle. Why? Because we understand that the presence or absence of a comma can change the meaning of a sentence. In our line of work, unclear sentences can have dire consequences for our readers. So we worry.

Structured Authoring and XML: Part Three

Not every content-creation group will benefit from structured authoring and XML. Sometimes, the expense of implementation outweighs the benefits realized, especially in smaller groups with less total page count.

Summer: A Time to Heat Up Your Career

The arrival of summer means hot weather. What are you doing this summer to help keep your professional skills hot and to nurture your career? Our chapter can help you by offering networking, mentoring, publishing and speaking opportunities, and ways to acquire new skills.

The New Word Order: Or, the Awful English Language

Will the global interconnectedness of our conversations freeze the features of our languages in place? If so, farther into the future than anyone can foresee, much of the human race will be stuck with English as we now know it.

Twenty-Five Years of Technical Communication

What hasn't changed in twenty-five years? There are a couple of things--things that aren't likely to change in the next twenty-five years either. Technical communicators will always have to prove the value of what they do. We'll discover new ways in which to contribute, but the need to prove our value will persist.

Usability Testing and Research

The more intuitive a product's interfaces and procedures become, the more usable it becomes. Thus, the less formal documentation it requires. To do our part, we can strive to reduce the number of words a customer needs to read. Focusing on clarity and concision, we can take pride that of the words that remain, every word will count. Working with usability experts, our fellow customer advocates, we can transmute unwieldy products into easily used ones. To me, that's a compelling reason to remain a technical communicator, regardless of why we became one.

The Wicked Which and Other Fairytales

Popular culture is filled with myths about grammar. Taught by generations of English teachers, these stories admonish little children to cling to the straight and narrow path, rather than venturing into the woods of creative communication. Some of these stories are usage guidelines rather than rules, but others are pure fantasy, the flight of some pedagogue's imagination.

Wield the Power of the Written Word

Technical writers can change their professional destiny and the destiny of the organization for which they work by choosing to write or not write a particular document. Too often, technical writers avoid or reject opportunities to influence their working environments positively because they look at their professional role too narrowly.

The Wonder of Words

There is much left to be done with words. I think the trend toward more graphical interfaces will continue, but so will the complexity of the technology we develop. So there will always be a need for communication experts to figure out the best wording for the details involved in that technology. Finding the best way to articulate ideas and communicate information for making decisions will continue to be our bread and butter. We will see who has the last word.

Write Right

When you scan job postings for technical communicators, you'll find prospective employers seeking candidates who have an understanding of current technology, working knowledge of publishing tools, and time management skills. A bullet may ask for 'excellent writing and editing skills,' but that bullet rarely appears at the top of the list. Not for me.

Leaders Light the Way

STC offers members many opportunities to practice and improve leadership skills. Whether you are guiding the chapter as an officer, serving as a committee manager, or participating in another way, you can make a difference this year! I encourage you to use this opportunity to sharpen your leadership, time management, and organizational skills. You will find it rewarding-both personally and professionally-and the experience will shine through on the job and on your resume.

Neologisms, Part 1: Fun with Words

In our professional lives, business and technology are the main sources for many new words. In our personal lives, blame (I mean credit) goes to popular culture for new words. New words, or 'neologisms,' are defined in Merriam Webster as 'a new word, usage, or expression' and (and next is my preferred definition) as 'a meaningless word coined by a psychotic.'

Toil and Trouble: HTML Help and NetHelp

Toil and trouble. That’s what this year’s online help crystal ball predicts. It shows two flavors of HTML-based help and to make matters worse, their names are confusing: HTML help (which is not the same as HTML-based help) and NetHelp. Oh, me nerves. Well, let’s try to calm ourselves and explore these new concepts.

XML in Brief

XML is the acronym for the extensible markup language. According to the W3C, it is 'the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web'. The following list explains what XML is and what it is not.

Why Vote in STC Elections?

Every year, each STC member is given the opportunity to vote twice as a member, once for the next year's Society (international-level) leaders and once for the next year's chapter (local-level) leaders. The Society and its chapters expend much effort and expense each year to recruit candidates and develop and distribute ballots; however, only about 10% of STC's members ever return those ballots. If such a small portion of members participate in elections, why bother holding them? The most fundamental reason is that STC's bylaws and the bylaws of each chapter require a duly elected leadership.

Learning How to Read an Interviewer's Mind

Have you ever wondered what was going on in the mind of someone interviewing you for a job? Did you wish you could have had a 'cheat sheet' to prepare for the kinds of questions she might ask? Thanks to Lori Lathrop, a freelance indexer of technical manuals, we have a 'Cliffs’ Notes' for job interviews. Lori Lathrop is the principal of Lathrop Media Services. Her experience includes more than sixteen years as a technical writer, editor, and professional indexer.

Delegating for Results

I presented a program recently that gave tips for becoming a more effective delegator. The tips explained the benefits of delegation and how to overcome common barriers. Because you can use these tips whenever you are leading a chapter, a committee, a team, or a department, I want to share them with you. If you are not delegating properly, you are making your own life more difficult. In turn, your subordinates suffer because their interests as well as their talents are being overlooked, however unintentionally.

Living in Cubeville

Someone told me recently that business owners favor cubicles because they are less expensive to build than walls; they are easy to break down and rearrange; and they depreciate in seven years, as opposed to walls, which depreciate in thirty years. In short, our 'cubes' are cost efficient, and they're probably here to stay. How, then, are we to deal with the obstacles that they present? We don't have enough space to spread out our documents. We go crazy trying to tune out the conversation taking place in the cubicle next door. Few cubicles have doors, and people tend to view our open entranceways as open invitations to stop by and chat. Last, but not least, cubicles sometimes feel like hamster cages, causing us to feel more like 'a number' than a human being. There is no way to make it nice; but there are ways to make it better. Here are some ways to cope.

A Mentor's Approach to Managing Technical Communicators

A manager, especially a more hard-nosed type, may pick up a writer's draft and attack the writer, circling mistakes with red ink, demanding rewrites, and peppering the work with negative remarks. If the manager is uptight, it doesn't take very long for subordinates to become uptight also. And being too managerial may end up creating an adversarial relationship, which can thwart the writer's professional growth. On the other hand, a supportive and nurturing fellow worker -- a mentor, in other words -- can help create a positive and productive team environment. Mentors may have to be patient with their writers at times, but that patience should pay off, long-term, in results and accomplishments. When you find ways to make your people look good, they will in turn make you look good.

Carolina Communiqué

This site is an extension of the Carolina Communiqué, the monthly newsletter of the Carolina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. In these Web pages, you can read back issues of the newsletter and browse through some of the more timeless feature articles. You can also find out what you can do to contribute. This newsletter's for you, about you, and from you....

Keeping Recruiters Accountable

Sooner or later, most of us work with a recruiter or two (or three or four) to look for a job or to respond to the ever-increasing abundance of employment opportunities for technical communicators in the Triangle area. In fact, due to the tendency companies have for hiring technical writers on a contract basis, recruiters often play a necessary part in our career development. This site offers some tips on dealing with recruiters and avoiding poor recruiting practices.

Increasing a Reader's Interest and Comprehension Through Basic Information Design

If you present information in multiple media, with complementary information, that address multiple learning styles, you increase a reader’s interest and comprehension by 65%.