Recently Read

Christmas looms large, and the days are “fair drawing in” as they say in these parts. I’m taking a couple of weeks off to relax and recharge, and no doubt to eat, drink and be (very) merry. As ever this time of year is pretty hectic, so here are few things that caught my eye over the past couple of weeks.

10 Word to avoid in your writing
A short list but the main point is to avoid gobbledygook. One of my pet peeves is the use of long words when a perfectly valid, shorter, word is available. The Plain English website has some excellent advice if you want to find out more.

No-one reads the help anyway

the next time you hear someone say, “No one reads the help anyway,” say, “Yah, no one uses Google either.”
This will lead to a puzzling follow-up question — What do you mean? I use Google all the time.
Then you say, What do you use Google for? To search for answers, solutions, and information when you have questions?

Like some of the commenters, I disagree with this a little. At a simple level it works, but there are flaws. However, as an opening gambit I think it’s a good one. It will make people stop and think, and once you have them thinking about it THEN you can explain the more subtle differences.

AuthorIT Yahoo Group Search
I’m listing this here so I don’t lose it again. Yahoo Groups are great but the search engine frequently falls over. MANY many thanks to Hamish for providing this resource, this is the kind of thing that makes the Internet great.

Building a successful web community

Do not assume that a community, particularly a successful web community, is easily built from the one ingredient of a shared interest – ensure there is also a goal or a purpose in the mix.

Very true. I know that some Technical Communicators are starting to thinking beyond user documentation, and the next step may well be to nurture online communities around your product. This article has some good tips, and I can vouch for them all having struggled to setup a Scottish Blogging site myself.

Technical Communicators and UI Design
Scott Nesbitt spotted an article about User Interface Design and a particular section caught his eye. It states that the documentation must be considered as part of the design, and Scott goes on to say:

“technical communicators need to get involved not only in the design and usability of an interface, but also how users will access documentation from within the interface.”

I couldn’t agree more with this, and recently I’ve been pushing my team to think along these lines, realising that we work with, and develop, “information” rather than “documents” meaning we need to have a greater sphere of influence.

To coin a phrase, we are the interface to the interface.

Comments

  1. Just wanted to add a comment regarding the link above to the AuthorIT Yahoo Group search. You might want to check out Grouply at http://www.grouply.com. Among many other things, Grouply enables you to conduct powerful searches across all your Yahoo Groups at once. Check it out and let me know what you think!

    Mark Robins
    Co-founder, Grouply
    mark-at-grouply-dot-com

    [site owner edit: thanks for the link Mark, I’ll let this pass as it is on topic]

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