Archive for February 2009
Technical Writing – 4 Ideas to Organize Your Technical Document Images and Screen Shots
Introduction Most technical writers would include at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screenshots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing, and importing them can quickly become a logistical nightmare,…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Make $62,780 a Year as a Technical Communicator
© Ugur Akinci I did not make up the annual income figure in the headline. That is the Average Annual Wage earned by technical communicators across the United States in 2007 according to the “2007 Technical Communicator Salary Survey” conducted by Society for Technical Communication. For example, in California, technical writers made as low as…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – VAED Method to Document a GUI Element
In database applications, CRUD is an important principle to observe. It is an acronym that stands for: Create (C) [i.e., connect to] database Read (R) database Use (U) data Destroy (D) [i.e., disconnect from] database When documenting the features of a GUI (Graphic User Interface), there is a similar ACRONYM that can help you create…
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Technical Writing – How to Use the Pending Marker in FrameMaker
Introduction FrameMaker (FM) is such a wonderful software to write long and complicated books and documents. In my 20-plus years of experience as a writer and information designer, nothing came close. FM has a very powerful built-in marker functionality with which you can mark not only your index words and cross-references, but your “pending stuff”…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – Who Needs Technical Writers and Communicators?
Here is a short and random list of companies that regularly look for technical writers: Software, hardware, networking companies, security access equipment manufacturers, medical manufacturers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, all government agencies, publishers and advertisement agencies, military installations and agencies, all Fortune 500 corporations, all non-profits, Internet and web companies, all international organizations like the United…
Read MoreThe Difference Between Acrobat Reader and Acrobat "Writer"
© Ugur Akinci NOTE: Acrobat “Writer” is the informal term with which many technical users refer to “Adobe Acrobat Pro” PDF editor. This is perhaps elementary but still I get emails and phone calls now and then from readers who are frustrated because their Acrobat won’t “behave properly.” What they specifically complain about is that…
Read MoreTwo Different Types of Software User Manuals in Technical Writing
© Ugur Akinci In technical writing, there are two different but related types of software user manuals and I call them “Button Guides” and “Procedural Tutorials”. A FUNCTION or GUI INTERFACE MANUAL explains what each “button”, or the graphic user interface (GUI) element that one sees on a screen, is all about and how does…
Read MoreTechnical Writing – How to Easily Find Differences Between Two MS Word Documents
Here is a task that a lot of technical writers have been confronted with in the past: 1. You have two documents, with slight differences between them. This happens, for example, when someone has edited a text but did not save any editing marks with the document. Or you might be handed two different versions…
Read MoreWhat's the Best Way to Learn Structured XML-Based FrameMaker?
© 2009 Ugur Akinci FrameMaker (FM) is a great and popular technical writing tool with XML-based single-sourcing functionality. But its learning curve is rather steep. So how does a technical writer teach him- or herself structured FrameMaker? What’s the best way to learn? Here are my suggestions, based on my ten years of Fortune 500…
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Display Framemaker Conditional Text by Using a Single Text Block
A Framemaker User Case Let’s say as a technical writer you want to display different versions of the same text in a FrameMaker technical document. You’d like to toggle different versions on and off. There is one condition however: you do not want to use multiple copies of the same text block (with perhaps different…
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