Archive for August, 2007:

Levels of difficulty and stress in a technical writer job

{ Posted on Aug 30 2007 by annegentle }
10 Comments
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Categories : techpubs
I have been thinking lately about how to measure the level of stress and difficulty you could expect from a particular technical writing job. Would it be the type of content you write? The output requirements? The deadlines? This post ...Read More »

Not the ROI of blogging, but the Reach And Influence of blogging

{ Posted on Aug 27 2007 by annegentle }
6 Comments
Categories : writing
At last week's Austin Social Media Club meeting the topic turned to running numbers to prove that social media should be used in a particular situation. My blogger buddy Ynema at talk.bmc talks about her frustrations when people talk about ...Read More »

A recent graduate talks about her experiences getting a masters degree in technical communication

{ Posted on Aug 23 2007 by annegentle }
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Categories : techpubs
In my previous post, I interviewed Diane Fleming who had completed a graduate degree in technical writing later in her career. Today's interview is with Melissa Burpo, who has completed the coursework and internship portions of the graduate program but ...Read More »

Should I get a graduate degree in technical writing? Interviews with those who have

{ Posted on Aug 21 2007 by annegentle }
15 Comments
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Categories : techpubs
It's no secret that I have a masters degree in technical and scientific communication from Miami University. With all the hype about Web 2.0, outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and social media like wikis, an interesting question that I get asked occasionally is, ...Read More »

Simplest of style guides

{ Posted on Aug 16 2007 by annegentle }
8 Comments
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Categories : writing
Ah, simplicity. Elegant. Succinct. Basic. Good. Welcome to ASI, new writer. Here are the basics: Write well, quickly, in the active voice and the present tense. Put punctuation outside the quoted material. Maintain gender neutrality. ("He" and "she": bad. "They": good.) Replace semicolons with periods. Use ...Read More »

DITA and wiki – w/ho/w will (we/you) write

{ Posted on Aug 14 2007 by annegentle }
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Categories : DITA, wiki
I received an excellent question from a reader about his eagerness to use wikis for his product's doc set, but he came across conflicts and issues when he questioned the practicality of maintaining a wiki for his large set of ...Read More »

Feedburner support – they help until it sticks

{ Posted on Aug 13 2007 by annegentle }
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Categories : blogging
I want to extol the virtues of Jon Klem at Feedburner, plus give a status update for this feed and the old TalkBMC feed. Now the feeds have been combined into one, bringing subscribers over with no interruption, and Jon ...Read More »

DITA round up

{ Posted on Aug 09 2007 by annegentle }
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Categories : DITA
Just doing a little data mining of the posts I've written about DITA in the last few years. I think that there's a gap for DITA users who are writers or content creators and not coders. I'd like to say ...Read More »

Non-profits, organizations, and social media

{ Posted on Aug 07 2007 by annegentle }
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Categories : nptech, social media
I have gathered several questions recently related to social media and non-profits using technology to further their causes. Many other people are writing about this with much more authority than I, but I would like to share my perspective and ...Read More »

What makes a doc plan Agile?

{ Posted on Aug 04 2007 by annegentle }
4 Comments
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Categories : agile, techpubs
Does working in an Agile development environment change the documentation plan, or user information plan? For many writers, the purpose of a doc plan is to inform the stakeholders what you (or your team) intends to deliver for docs for a ...Read More »
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