Older Articles
A few of my unfavourite things in Microsoft Word (Word 2003 and Word 2007)
I have enjoyed a long relationship with Microsoft Word for Windows, and I would describe myself as a reluctant admirer. As a heavy-duty user of Word, I understand that I am not using it in the way it was designed to be used, so I have modified my expectations accordingly. As well as my expectations, I have also learned to modify some of Word’s default settings so that I can have a little more control over its behaviour. As I have recently started working with Word 2007, I am going to describe some of my favourite tweaks – the adjustments that I make to disable my unfavourite features in Word 2003, and what the equivalent adjustments are in Word 2007. Read the rest of this article…
Writing. In small. Chunks.
Download the slides from my introduction to DITA presentation, given at a meeting of the Electronic Publishing specialist group of the British Computer Society (15th July 2008).
Keeping your CV out of the bin
Whenever a recruiter or an HR department advertises a new vacancy they generally get inundated by CVs (sometimes known as résumés). But the truth is that most CVs go straight into the bin, as they don?t pass the first stage of filtering. David Farbey has been a technical writer for the last 14 years, and has also worked as a specialist recruitment consultant. In this article David gives some hints on how to keep your CV out of the bin when you apply for a job. This article is based on a presentation David gave at the STC Summit in Philadelphia in June 2008. Read more…
Leaders need to Listen
This article on leadership was published in the July-August 2008 issue of Tieline, the newsletter for STC leaders.
There is an aspect of leadership that’s just as important as knowing how to resolve conflicts. That is knowing when and how to listen. If we are leading a chapter or a SIG or a Society-level committee and one of our members raises an issue, we need to listen very carefully to what they have to say. Read more… (the article begins on page 10)
Introducing KIDMM
KIDMM is a BCS initiative that allows professionals from a wide range of specialities to share their experiences in managing information and to learn from each other. In this report on the KIDMM MetaKnowledge Mash-Up that took place in September 2007, published on the STC UK Chapter web site, I give some background to KIDMM, and explain why technical communicators should be taking an interest in it.
Who’s going to write the User’s Guide?
This article was published in the Annual Review of the British Computer Society for 2007. In it, I addressed some of the common excuses put forward for not dealing seriously with user documentation.
Here’s an extract:
There comes a time when every software development manager
has to find an answer to the question “who’s going to write the User’s Guide?”
… in many small and medium-sized enterprises the User’s Guide question often
becomes a problem that everyone tries to ignore.
You can read the full text of the article on the BCS web site.
More articles
DITA Changes Everything: A Review of the X-Pubs Conference 2006
Creating an online survey with SurveyMonkey
Job satisfaction for technical communicators (academic research)
