Policies and procedures as an API

Here’s a trend that didn’t make our list of predictions for 2017 – having company policies and procedures accessible via an Application Programming Interface (API). API is a term used to describe mechanisms that allow an application to access data or functionality provided by another application, system or service. For example, if your policies and procedures were… Read more »

Towards content lakes

One of the trends in both data and content management is the move away from silos. In data management circles, there is a trend towards the collection and aggregation of customer data into “data lakes”. According to Margaret Rouse, a data lake is: A storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its… Read more »

Americanisms and Britishisms

There are user documentation projects where we are asked to write in American English instead of British English, and generally this is a pretty straightforward exercise for us. However, when I speak at conferences in the USA, delegates sometimes ask me afterwards what I meant by a particular expression. For example, I was recently asked… Read more »

API documentation design patterns

One of the current developments in technical communication is the development of a common way to present API documentation. At present, there are a number of different design patterns that organisations are using, but, as with many things, there seems to be a desire to establish a de facto standard. One part of this has… Read more »

Adapting to change in technical communication

Technical Authors work in a profession where they must be able to adapt to changes in the technology sector. Often, the changes relate to the outputs they need to create or the authoring tools they use, and most Technical Authors adapt quite easily to the new situations. However, sometimes there are also changes to writing styles or the… Read more »