Book review: Every Page is Page One

There’s a joke in education along the lines that students are taught the notes their teachers wrote down at university 20 years earlier…without going through the heads of either. I mention this because there have been a number of technical communicators who have started to question the technical writing best practices that have been taught… Read more »

Every Sherlock Holmes needs his Watson (or Molly)

Series 3 of Sherlock has just started on BBC One in the UK. As nearly everyone knows, Sherlock Holmes is a genius consulting detective. Yet, as the saying goes, every Sherlock Holmes needs his Watson (or, in the first episode of this series, needs his Molly). Sherlock Holmes is only a part of a pair,… Read more »

Technical Author salary trends in 2013/14

Here is a summary of salary trends and demand levels for Technical Authors, derived from the ITJobsWatch website. Demand for Technical Authors has risen The demand has risen from 1 in every 1,000 IT advertised jobs being for a Technical Author in January 2013 to 2 in every 1,000 jobs at the end of the… Read more »

Documents Made to Measure

Content and documents written for users should be like a good fitting shirt – comfortable enough to enable the wearer to function in the most effective way possible. Basic shirts are offered in only small, medium, large and extra large options. The collars can be too tight, the sleeves too long, and the body rarely… Read more »

What would a Technical Author ask from Santa?

Saint Nicholas’s day has passed, which means Christmas is getting close. So what would a Technical Author ask from Santa Claus? One thing we could request is the ability to embed one Google document inside another. That would mean that Google Docs could support some basic content reuse. Another would be to request Madcap Flare’s… Read more »