In conjunction with The Society for Technical Communication, we’ll be presenting the webinar Planning User Documentation When You Are a Startup Business on Tuesday, 19th February. In this presentation, we’ll look at how to plan a user documentation project when you’re working for a startup technology company. Working in this environment gives you the opportunity to… Read more »
Category: Technical Communication
The Society for Communication’s first guest blogger is….
The Society for Technical Communication, the professional body for technical communicators in the USA, is introducing a number of specially selected guest bloggers to its official blog. The first guest blogger is, we’re pleased to say, Cherryleaf’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Ellis Pratt. These posts, called “Letter from the UK”, will explore what’s happening for technical… Read more »
Where do the new trends and ideas in technical communication come from?
Sometimes we hear Technical Authors complain that the Help Authoring Tool vendors are not innovative enough. We believe that’s an unfair criticism, and that it’s unrealistic to expect the vendors to lead changes in technical communication. The new trends and ideas in technical communication need to come from other places. We have moved away from… Read more »
The future of technical documentation is more about psychology than technology
In the quest to offer better forms of user assistance, most experts in the technical communications profession propose technological solutions: using XML, intelligent and adaptive content etc. to present essentially the same type of guidance as has been provided for the past 20 years. We believe there has been a change in the relationship between… Read more »
Is it time for a new writing style in technical communication?
While there have been huge leaps in the technology used to create and publish user documentation, it’s been quite a while since there were any serious changes to the writing style in technical communication. Here is a rough timeline for technical communications standards, according to xml.org: 1961 Quick Reader Comprehension (QRC) 1963 Hughes STOP – (Sequential Thematic… Read more »