Is it possible for Technical Authors to write content more quickly?

Approximately 50% of a Technical Author’s day is spent writing. However, when Technical Publications teams look for efficiencies, they tend to focus on the 50% of time spent on non-writing activities, such as researching, reviewing and planning. They assume the content itself cannot be written more quickly. To an extent, they are right, as the querty qwerty keyboard… Read more »

Not so cool tools for Technical Authors – speech recognition software

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 »

Cool tools for Technical Authors – travel equipment

We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf. This time we’ll look at travel equipment. The role of consulting technical communicator can involve travel to exotic places, such as San Diego, Cologne and Swindon. Your travelling experience can be affected by what equipment you have on your travels, so it make sense to take the right… Read more »

Cool tools for Technical Authors – video equipment

We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf. This time we’ll look at video recording. Video is becoming an important medium in technical communication. In addition to screencast videos (walkthroughs of application screens), software like Camtasia and Captivate enable you to include video of people in your presentations. Doing this creates a more TV-like… Read more »

Cool tools for Technical Authors – audio recording

We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf, and this time we’ll look at audio recording tools. It can be very useful for a Technical Author to be able to record what someone is saying. If you are gathering information from a Subject Matter Expert, you can let them just speak naturally and… Read more »