Tag Archives: technical writing

Lies, Death, and PowerPoint

Posted on 2 May 2010 by David Farbey

The US military were reported last week to have found out something that many of us involved in information design and technical communications have known for a very long time: over-use of PowerPoint obscures the truth rather than reveals it, … Continue reading →

Posted in information design | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Why Agile might be good for technical writers after all

Posted on 21 April 2010 by David Farbey

Many tech writers find the whole idea of working in an Agile programming environment a bit scary. There are no specs, for heaven’s sake! However, there are surely some advantages to being a tech writer on an Agile team, if … Continue reading →

Posted in technical writing | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Messages from the Content Strategy Forum

Posted on 18 April 2010 by David Farbey

I spent Friday at the Content Strategy 2010 Forum (#csforum10) in Paris, which was a remarkable event for many reasons. First of all (and I am allowing my personal prejudices as a technical writer to come to the fore here) … Continue reading →

Posted in content strategy | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Why I’m concerned about libel law reform

Posted on 11 April 2010 by David Farbey

On the face of it, having a law against libel seems a sensible idea. You shouldn’t be allowed to go around damaging people’s reputation by writing things like “Mr X is an arsonist” or “Ms Y is addicted to cocaine” … Continue reading →

Posted in science writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Social Media in Technical Communication

Posted on 21 March 2010 by David Farbey

The Spring 2010 edition of the ISTC‘s quarterly journal, Communicator, has a special supplement (sponsored by Adobe) on The role of social media in technical communication. While acknowledging that social media can be used for frivolous time wasting, the four … Continue reading →

Posted in technical writing | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Don’t be normal!

Posted on 14 February 2010 by David Farbey

Microsoft Word is a wonderful product, and I’m not joking at all. It’s easy to forget that not so long ago, back in the days of BW (“before Word”), creating documents for any purpose was a long and tiresome process. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Farbey’s Law of Document Stability

Posted on 29 January 2010 by David Farbey

The other day, I was making final revisions to a group of Microsoft Word documents that were needed for an imminent product release. I placed an updated version of a document on our document management system and sent a link … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Comments

A little more advice for job seekers

Posted on 5 December 2009 by David Farbey

The topic of finding work as a technical writer came up on a mailing list I subscribe to recently, and I want to share some advice here. I have been a job seeker in this market many times, and I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments