Comments on: Watch that space! (more from TCUK09) http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2009/09/watch-that-space-more-from-tcuk09/ on technical writing, content strategy, information design, and all the whitespace in between Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:16:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Deborah Lewis Baxley Doyle http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2009/09/watch-that-space-more-from-tcuk09/comment-page-1/#comment-286 Deborah Lewis Baxley Doyle Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:10:00 +0000 http://www.farbey.co.uk/?p=319#comment-286 Interesting article! I really don't think any of us, even the most evangelical of structured writing believers, ever have thought format doesn't matter at all. I do think we exaggerate its lower priority to get the bigger point across which is writers often rely on nice formatting to "balance," if you will, not-so-nice writing. To me, your article and the presentation on which it focuses reveals important truths; better said, it reminds us that aesthetics always matter to human beings. I just wish more tech writers could understand (would understand?) that the best aesthetics they can "do" have more to do with being concise and thorough in conveying meaning through words themselves than the way they appear on a screen or a page. Interesting article! I really don’t think any of us, even the most evangelical of structured writing believers, ever have thought format doesn’t matter at all. I do think we exaggerate its lower priority to get the bigger point across which is writers often rely on nice formatting to “balance,” if you will, not-so-nice writing. To me, your article and the presentation on which it focuses reveals important truths; better said, it reminds us that aesthetics always matter to human beings. I just wish more tech writers could understand (would understand?) that the best aesthetics they can “do” have more to do with being concise and thorough in conveying meaning through words themselves than the way they appear on a screen or a page.

]]> By: Matthew Ellison http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2009/09/watch-that-space-more-from-tcuk09/comment-page-1/#comment-285 Matthew Ellison Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:25:06 +0000 http://www.farbey.co.uk/?p=319#comment-285 Interesting comment Kai - thanks. The UA Europe conference was a great success, but I think we'll definitely have to encourage more blogging and tweeting at next year's event. As a first step towards this, we have now created a Twitter account for UA Europe (http://twitter.com/ua_europe) and are publishing a hashtag of #ua_europe for tweets about the conference. Any comments from anyone who attended this year's UA Europe conference? Interesting comment Kai – thanks. The UA Europe conference was a great success, but I think we’ll definitely have to encourage more blogging and tweeting at next year’s event. As a first step towards this, we have now created a Twitter account for UA Europe (http://twitter.com/ua_europe) and are publishing a hashtag of #ua_europe for tweets about the conference. Any comments from anyone who attended this year’s UA Europe conference?

]]> By: Kai http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2009/09/watch-that-space-more-from-tcuk09/comment-page-1/#comment-283 Kai Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:47:11 +0000 http://www.farbey.co.uk/?p=319#comment-283 Thank you for your extensive and informative posts and tweets from TCUK09 - they are most helpful to take the pulse and temperature of our industry for those of us who couldn't attend! I was wondering if you had heard anything about the UA Europe conference that took place a week before in Cardiff? It seems this event was covered much less than TCUK, at least among tech writers, and I wondered why that might have been...? Thank you for your extensive and informative posts and tweets from TCUK09 – they are most helpful to take the pulse and temperature of our industry for those of us who couldn’t attend!

I was wondering if you had heard anything about the UA Europe conference that took place a week before in Cardiff? It seems this event was covered much less than TCUK, at least among tech writers, and I wondered why that might have been…?

]]> By: Andrea Wenger http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2009/09/watch-that-space-more-from-tcuk09/comment-page-1/#comment-276 Andrea Wenger Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:49:21 +0000 http://www.farbey.co.uk/?p=319#comment-276 David, your third bullet point is key: "Is it possible that one day a syntactic spacing technology such as Readsmart will be integrated into a structured authoring tool?" The technical communication profession will only embrace syntactic spacing if it's consistent with other technology that allows content to be repurposed without writers hand-crafting the output. Otherwise, I don't see how a cost-benefit analysis would favor the use of this technology. David, your third bullet point is key: “Is it possible that one day a syntactic spacing technology such as Readsmart will be integrated into a structured authoring tool?” The technical communication profession will only embrace syntactic spacing if it’s consistent with other technology that allows content to be repurposed without writers hand-crafting the output. Otherwise, I don’t see how a cost-benefit analysis would favor the use of this technology.

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