Technical Communication Culture: A Review

Mike Unwalla reports on the presentations that he attended at the ISTC conference in Liverpool, UK, 2-4 October 2007.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>TC

Plain English

According to Plain English Campaign (www.plainenglish.co.uk), plain English is "… something that the intended audience can read, understand and act upon the first time they read it. Plain English takes into account design and layout as well as language." Many organisations have found that plain English brings commercial advantages.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2008). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Glossaries Aid Clarity

A glossary is an alphabetically arranged list of terms, with a definition or an explanation of each term. A term can be a single word or many words. Typically, in a printed document, the glossary is at the end of the document. Usually, in online help, each term in a topic, or the first instance of a term, has a popup that explains the term.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Glossary

Copywriting and Technical Writing Compared

Technical writers (technical authors) produce technical literature such as standard operating procedures (SOP), user guides, reference manuals and white papers. Copywriters produce advertising copy and publicity copy (also known as marketing communications or marcomms). Typically, that means product brochures, poster advertisements, advertorials, leaflets, and mailshots.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Marketing

Beyond Plain English

Plain English is good for increasing the quality of written documents. Unfortunately, it has limits in many technical situations. We need a special form of language, known as a controlled language, to overcome those limits. One particular controlled language is ASD Simplified Technical English.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Writing>Minimalism>Controlled Vocabulary

Writing for an International Audience

Ideally, software and its documentation is localised (translated) into the languages of the target markets. However, in many cases, it is not cost-effective do this. Even if the target markets are the English-speaking countries, differences exist between the way English is used in the US, the UK, and Australia for example, and it is easy to cause confusion. This article examines some issues.

TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Localization

Alternatives to Software Documentation

Software documentation such as Help systems and user guides may be the best method of helping your customers to use your software effectively. However, one or more of these alternatives may be a better solution.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Online>Help

FAQs: Do Better Solutions Exist?

Documentation sometimes contains a section titled, 'Frequently asked questions' or 'FAQs'. The TechScribe website used to have a page of FAQs, but better options exist, and therefore, we removed the FAQs.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Online>FAQ

Information Mapping

Information Mapping is a proprietary method for the analysis, organisation, and presentation of information. It is based on the needs of the users and their purpose in using the documentation. Information Mapping has three parts: analysis, organisation, presentation.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>Standards

Paper and Online Documentation Trade-Offs

This article explains the relative merits of paper and online documentation from a usability perspective. First, we look at the different types of user. Then we look at typical paper documentation and online documentation with respect to these user types. Finally, we present the relative merits of paper and online documentation for different user types.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Usability>Online

Review: The Global English Style Guide: A Review

Many good style guides exist. Why do technical writers need another style guide? Unlike other style guides, this book covers grammatical structures, not only particular terms. The book has more than 200 pages of text (plus 4 appendices) that give detailed explanations of both good practice and bad practice.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2008). Articles>Reviews>Style Guides>Globalization

Evaluation of International English and Machine Translation

Machine translation often gives humorous translations or incorrect translations. Usually, a bad translation is because the source text is not clear in a way that a machine can 'understand'. If text is optimised for machine translation, machine translation gives excellent results. There are two sets of texts. The first set is written in standard English. The second set is equivalent to the standard English text, but it is optimised for machine translation. Google Translate was used to translate the texts into Bulgarian and into Spanish.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2009). Articles>Language>Localization>Machine Translation

Machine Translation and International English

Machine translation (MT) is the automatic translation of text using only software without the help of a human translator. An alternative name for machine translation is automated translation.

TechScribe (2009). Articles>Language>Translation>Machine Translation

International English Gives Satisfactory Machine Translation into Spanish

An article about machine translation was translated into Spanish by Google Translate (www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en). In September 2009, professional translators evaluated the translation for fluency and for accuracy of meaning.

TechScribe (2009). Articles>Language>Translation>Machine Translation