Approximately 50% of a Technical Author’s day is spent writing. However, when Technical Publications teams look for efficiencies, they tend to focus on the 50% of time spent on non-writing activities, such as researching, reviewing and planning. They assume the content itself cannot be written more quickly. To an extent, they are right, as the querty qwerty keyboard… Read more »
Tag: Technical Author
Is there gender bias in your Technical Author job advert?
Simon Morisawa-Bostock pointed me towards an article on gender bias in job advertisements (You Don’t Know It, But Women See Gender Bias in Your Job Postings): A scientific study of 4,000 job descriptions revealed that a lack of gender-inclusive wording caused significant implications for recruiting professionals tasked to recruit women to hard-to-fill positions underrepresented by women. Researchers… Read more »
Book review: Every Page is Page One
There’s a joke in education along the lines that students are taught the notes their teachers wrote down at university 20 years earlier…without going through the heads of either. I mention this because there have been a number of technical communicators who have started to question the technical writing best practices that have been taught… Read more »
Changing times in technical communication 2 – Workflow
We’ve been on the road in recent days and weeks, visiting different documentation teams, and we’ve found there are distinct signs of change. In this post, I’ll look at how we’re starting to see the workflow for creating User Assistance beginning to change. We found many documentation teams overstretched and starting to be asked how… Read more »
Becoming a Technical Author – writing your CV
One of the most common questions we’re asked is how to become a Technical Author.