Our method for creating online courses involves making an audio recording of the presenter, transcribing it, editing the script and then recording the final, video presentation. We’ve tried using speech recognition software to create the transcribed script, and it has been a deeply frustrating experience. While speech recognition is proving successful for searching and issuing… Read more »
Category: Technical Writing
Draftback – could it reveal how Technical Authors actually write?
James Somers is releasing an add-on for Google Docs, Draftback, that enables you to play back and analyse the creation of any Google Doc you have permission to edit. It means you can see how a writer created the document, the sections they spent time rewriting and rearranging, the elements that were pasted into the document from… Read more »
Stenography for Technical Authors?
This tweet caught my eye: Some people write at 240 *words* per minute http://t.co/aWqtrzI92i — Kas Thomas (@kasthomas) October 30, 2014 It linked to an article The 100 Year Old Trick to Writing at 240 Words Per Minute: About four years ago, stenographer Mirabai Knight came to the conclusion that stenography had been a walled… Read more »
Microsoft’s “No more robot speak” in action
Our post about how Microsoft is changing its writing style (Microsoft moves away from “robot speak” in its user documentation) generated a lot of interest, so I thought it might be useful to post some examples of it that we’ve spotted. These examples are from Office 365 Premium Edition.
Writing troubleshooting topics
It’s a fair bet that the introduction of the new Troubleshooting information type into the DITA 1.3 technical authoring standard will affect how all Technical Authors write troubleshooting topics, regardless of whether they use DITA or not. That’s because the proposed elements for troubleshooting topics make good sense, and it offers a standardised approach to writing… Read more »