In a recent LinkedIn discussion on “Most important competencies for technical writers,” I commented that the most important skill for technical writers was explanation, and that the ability to write and the ability to explain are not the same thing, and that the ability to explain is significantly less common that the ability to write ..read more

I have wanted to write about the role of story in technical communication for a long time. It is certainly a subject that comes up again and again, but without any clear message emerging. I have long felt that yes, story is fundamental to technical communication, but I could never quite pin down how. It ..read more

It is often appealing to think of technical communication as a process of answering user’s questions. The difficulty with this view is that one answer can have many questions. If you answer each of those questions, you would be providing substantially the same answer over and over again. This is very easy to see on StackOverflow ..read more

“Hire Expert Writers,” Says Google That is the title of a post from M2Bespoke about Google’s emphasis on returning reputable content. What is an “expert writer” in this context? Many of those who have commented on it and passed it around take it to mean expertise in writing. That seems to be the interpretation that ..read more

tl;dr: We can apply engineering methods to content development, but we do not have the body of proven algorithms or known-good data to justify formal certification of communication professionals the way we have for doctors and engineers. We talk about content engineering. I call myself a content engineer sometimes. But can content really be engineered? Is ..read more

And suddenly every tech comm and content strategy conference seems to be about getting your content ready for chatbots. Makes sense if you are a conference organizer. Chatbots are sexy and sex sells, even if the definition of sexy is a grey box with a speaker sitting on the counter. But chatbots are not the ..read more

If you let one of your houseplants completely dry out and then try to bring it back to life by dumping a large amount of water in the pot, you will end up with water all over the floor. Dry soil cannot absorb moisture quickly so the water you pour in will run through the ..read more