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Entries Tagged as 'Technical Writing'

Does your writing have an accent? How does it hold you back?

November 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

Maybe you don’t hear your accent, but others do. When you read their documents, does the accent come through?

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10 Best Mistakes I Made in 2009

November 22nd, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, Technical Writing

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. If you don’t know your mistakes you’re going to repeat them. Here’s my best mistakes.

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Are technical documents a waste of time?

November 20th, 2009 · View Comments · Career, Technical Writing

“Don’t worry” she said. “No one reads this stuff anyway. Just get it done.” Sounds familiar?

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Why Yahoo Ads is better value than Google Adwords

November 18th, 2009 · View Comments · Technical Writing

Why do you use Google Adwords? Is it because everyone else does? What if I told you Yahoo ads was better, well, would you be interested.

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Janet Swisher on FLOSS Manuals, Open Source, and Book Sprints

November 12th, 2009 · View Comments · Productivity, Social Media, Technical Writing

Want to know how to run an open source ‘book sprint’? Janet Swisher does.

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Doc2Help – How To Save Time With Dynamic Content Creation

November 11th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

How can I create technical documents or web content that gets updated on the fly?

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How to Study Technical Writing Online & Get Certified

November 10th, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, How To, Technical Writing

The University of Limerick, Ireland offers an excellent online course for those who want to study technical writing at home.
This university has a pretty amazing campus, specializes in the Arts and provides a conveyor belt of freshly-minted technical writers to Microsoft, Google and IBM in Ireland. It’s one of the few universities in Europe with [...]

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How Technical Writers can use XML in Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

November 8th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

Manish on the Adobe Tech Comms site uploaded this video on how to get more information on the XML power in the Technical Communication Suite. He presented this video at the summer XML conference and talked about topic based documentation using TCS2 in XML way.

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Society of Technical Communications tries to define Technical Communicator and Fails

November 6th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

Image via Wikipedia

This week the much-maligned STC tries to define what it means to be a technical communicator.
Actually the STC are at pains to point out that the “thoughts expressed in this post are not the official opinion of the Society for Technical Communication or its Board of Directors, but rather only of the individual.”
Seems [...]

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What are Your Favorite 10 Technical Writing Tools?

November 4th, 2009 · View Comments · Technical Writing

I’ve used the same technical writing tools for the last 5 years. A few products have come across my desk but nothing that really blown me away.
Here’s a run-down of what I use to write my technical documents. No order of preference. Which should I keep? Which should I replace?

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RoboHelp 8.0.1 Improves Integration with Adobe FrameMaker; Anchored Frames and Hyperlinks Display Correctly

November 4th, 2009 · View Comments · Technical Writing

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Adobe has addressed some of the glitches in RoboHelp 8 and fast-tracked version 8.1. This release also improves the FrameMaker-RoboHelp interaction for the Technical Communication Suite users.
Key points regarding Adobe FrameMaker integration include better response time when linking multiple .fm files; images set in the FrameMaker’s Anchored Frame are displayed correctly in RoboHelp; [...]

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10 Reasons to Love Microsoft Word 2010 & Ditch Snagit’s Screen Capture Tool

October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

Image by Ivan Walsh

What do you want to see in Microsoft Office 2010? Arpan Shan, who has access to the beta versions at Microsoft, shares his favorite 10 Office 2010 features.
Some of these you may already know, but he highlights some nice ideas that seem to be coming through. In Word 2010, for example, you [...]

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Use Metaphors to Instantly Connect with the Right Side of Customers’ Brains

October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

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Metaphors connect ideas through images.
Learning to use metaphors allows you to suggest things to readers that would otherwise be stopped by their logical ‘left-brain’.  Right-handed people are left-brain predominant.
In theory, when you use images, such as visual metaphors, you connect to the side of the brain, which interprets abstract concepts.
Metaphors connect at a [...]

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Reviews of 9 Mind Mapping apps

October 25th, 2009 · Comments Off · Reviews, Technical Writing, Tips

David Appleyard reviews 9 different specialist mind mapping applications. Some are expensive, commercial solutions – others are relatively budget-friendly.

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5 Quick Links: Using Adobe AIR for Online Help

October 25th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing

Want to develop Online Help based on Adobe AIR. Here are some resources to help you learn more:

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