Leading Technical Communication
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On technical communication, leadership, and occasional flights of fancy.
Leading Technical Communication
5y ago
The IBM Kingston lab
40 years ago — on May 29, 1979 — I walked into the IBM programming lab in Kingston, New York, for my first day of work as a technical writer.
I’ve seen a lot in those 40 years. Some things about the profession have changed a lot; some haven’t changed at all.
Audience
The audience has always been the focal point for everything we do. 40 years ago, we paid lip service to that fact. Today we understood that we’re here to serve our readers, but we often struggle with how to do that. Soon it’ll be non-negotiable: If we don’t satisfy our readers, they’ll go elsewhere to get info ..read more
Leading Technical Communication
5y ago
They were every technical writer’s holy grail: the perfect instructions.
In October 2018, Ernest Fribjer, a technical writer at Techcomm-R-Us in Dayton, Ohio, received an assignment to write instructions for updating CRM records in SalesForce. A few weeks later, without warning, a series of screams emanated from Fribjer’s cubicle.
“Woo-hoo! I did it! I did it!” Then, gales of maniacal laughter, followed by a thud.
Original image source: oxygenxml.com
Other Techcomm-R-Us writers raced to the scene. They found Fribjer slumped over his desk, a blissful smile on his face.
As one colleague started ..read more
Leading Technical Communication
5y ago
(Subtitle: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style)
If you wanted to rewrite Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style — and who hasn’t wanted to do that? — what would it look like?
Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, tried his hand, and the result is a New York Times bestseller. If you write for work or for fun, you’ll love it.
Dreyer’s English is partly a style guide — there are handy, easy-to-reference chapters on, among other things, punctuation, foreign words, and proper nouns — and partly a platform for Dreyer’s witty and well-crafted prose. It’s a 21st century S&W, but ..read more