Archive for June 2010
Information Design – FIFA 2010 World Soccer Cup MatchCast
FIFA did a great job in designing its MatchCast web site where you can follow ongoing matches in real time. There’s no video or sound but an excellent minute-by-minute play-by-play, with ample stats and information for your enjoyment. The four tabs at the top of the screen do a great job in sharing such “meta…
Read MoreTechnical Writing Must be CLEAR
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing has to be clear, linear, and logical. Technique: Write in simple sentences that anybody can understand Avoid compound sentences with multiple clauses. Here is the most basic sentence structure in English: SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT If a sentence does not have this structure, try to rearrange the components…
Read MoreWhat’s "Content Strategy"? What Does a Content Strategist Do?
(Excerpts) Content strategy is a relatively new profession, and a big profession. Within it are numerous fields of practice. To use an analogy, talking about content strategy is a like talking about doctors. Doctors range from neurologists to podiatrists, and all body parts in between, but they all started with the basics of anatomy, whether …
Read MoreTechnical Writing Must be CORRECT
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing needs to be correct, before anything else. This is the MOST IMPORTANT sine qua non condition of all technical writing. If a technical document is incorrect, it’s value is zero, nil, zilch. The rest doesn’t matter. Incorrect technical writing creates confusion, misinformation, and even dangerous mistakes and disasters. Technique…
Read MoreInformation Design — NPR's "Obama Tracker" vs. a Plain Table
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Sometimes information design takes off in directions mostly because we have the tools; mostly because “yes, we can!” However, whether such a design is an improvement over the good’old plain table is a topic open to discussion. Here is one such design illustrating President Obama’s most important policy initiatives since the…
Read MoreSome Common Career Titles for Technical Writers and Communicators
If you’re a junior technical writer just graduated from college and looking for a job in the market place, it’d help to be aware of all the titles that technical communicators carry today. That way you can expand your job search to include all these titles, and not only those of “technical writer” and “technical…
Read MoreFree Articles on Localization and Translating Technical Documents
Here are some free articles about various aspects of technical document translation and localization, courtesy of Global Vision International, Inc. Thou Shall Have Free and Transparent TMS: Client Side News Article Does Your Product “Speak” Your Client’s Language? Is the World Wide Web Really Worldwide? Localize Your Product To Globalize Your Business To Localize Or…
Read MoreTechnical Writing is NOT "Creative Writing"
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Technical writing fails when it tries to become “fine writing” or “creative writing.” Why? Because one of the main tools of “fine writing” is attributing human-like qualities to non-human actors and agents. That’s a definite taboo in technical documentation. (“Anthropomorphizing” is the $100-word that says the same thing.) For example you…
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How to Break into Technical Writing – 4 Questions & Answers
How to break into technical writing is always a hot question with multiple answers. A reader who has just received his Bachelor’s degree (congrats!) sent the following letter the other day: “I would like to break into the technical writing/communication field, though I have some questions:1) What should I have as an entry-level technical writer?…
Read MoreThe Writers Block and Madcap Software to Jointly Address the Indian Market
The Writers Block (TWB) and MadCap Software will work together to address the growing opportunity in the corporate information management and technical communications space. The focus of the alliance will be to tap into the information management, knowledge architecture and workflow process management needs of fast growing companies. The key components of the alliance include…
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