The ContentHug interviews

I was asked to take part in the ContentHug series of interviews on technical communication and content strategy. .@ellispratt shares his thoughts on technical communication: http://t.co/pTZjRLm9PU #techcomm — Vinish Garg (@vingar) September 21, 2015 It was fun and challenging, going through the questions. ContentHug’s Vinish Garg is interviewing a number of consultants involved in technical communication… Read more »

Creating palaces of almost forgotten things

This weekend, we went to the Fabularium on London’s South Bank, where the programme highlighted The Museum of Almost Forgotten Things. It struck me that this concept could also be applied to technical communication. The impetus to write things down, to document policies and procedures and to write user documentation for software written in a… Read more »

Common sense isn’t always common

Here’s some examples from Munich of what might seem to obvious and common sense to the one audience, but not to others. Traffic lights that have four lights, with the symbols –, O, I and K: Pedestrian crossing lights that have two people instead of one: The second set of lights is still comprehendible (hold… Read more »

The decline of the gerund in technical documentation?

Louise Downe, who works at the UK’s Government Digital Service, wrote a blog post (Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns), where she stated: “After several rounds of user testing, the Home Office changed the name of ‘Immigration Health Surcharge’ to ‘check if you need to pay towards your health care in the UK’ –… Read more »

New training courses in technical communication are on their way

It might seem like we’ve been quiet recently, but that’s partly because we’ve been working on an academic project that we hope to be announcing towards the end of the year. As a spin-off from this project, we’re developing new training courses in technical communication. These courses are at a more advanced level than our basic/intermediate courses, and… Read more »