Technical Writing and Editing's Journal
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Thursday, April 14, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
When I started as a tech writer, STC was a valuable professional association. Not invaluable, but very nice to have. Today I received the following email from the STC President and I'm curious whether any of you feel the changes are good, bad, or simply necessary.
A reduction in dues sounds nice...
This is the year we reinvent STC! We do so to better serve the increasingly diverse community of technical communicators. We are shifting our focus from STC the organization to STC as a collection of services and delivery channels that meet the professional needs of our members. To make this shift, we are becoming more market centered, understanding whom we serve and what they want and need. Today, I am extremely pleased to announce the start of Project Phoenix. This is the major program to bring about the shift to a market-focused STC. The project has the following goals:
* Transform the Society’s web presence to increase the value for current and future members
* Improve the relationship between the Society and its current and former members
* Increase the Society’s registered member base
* Grow the Society’s revenue while decreasing its reliance on dues-based revenue
* Establish the Society as the center of the online universe for technical communicators globally
* Dramatically overhaul the Society’s brand identity
* Increase the digital distribution of the Society’s publications
To help us meet these goals, we have engaged a team of specialists who have a proven track record helping organizations like STC. We are funding this engagement by not filling certain staff positions at this time. We are using that money to augment our staff with these specialists instead. We have created a special web page to keep you informed about Project Phoenix. We will be creating a community on our community network platform to encourage and support member input, feedback, and discussion about Project Phoenix. And we will be using our social media channels throughout the year to engage interested members and non-members alike.
I ask for everyone to look for some way to get constructively engaged in this project during this year. Together, we can build the new STC.
Michael Hughes
STC President
Saturday, April 3, 2010
I am editing and rewriting course materials for a non-profit. The name is registered, but the registered mark appears sporadically throughout the text. Is the registered mark required in every mention of the name, or for the first usage only? Is there a hard rule on this, or some flexibility? I couldn't find the answer in my AP guide.
Thanks!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Teen Novelists is a writing-based community for all of those aspiring authors who dream to, one day, have their hardbacks splayed across shelves. Our goal here is to provide a hassle-free, fun society to share stories, ideas, and exchange comments, critique, and criticism.
If you're interested, come join!
P.S. Mods, if this isn't allowed, feel free to delete!
Friday, December 11, 2009
I got this in my email today and thought I would pass it along, in case anyone has this experience.
I have a one year assignment in Huntsville AL with Sikorsky for a Flight Manual Writer. They want to see folks with rotary wing experience (preferably UH-60) but will consider folks with other helicopter experience.
Would you know of someone who may be interested who fits this bill?
Send resume to ebednarz@kforce.com for more info!
Thanks
Eileen
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tristan Bishop of Symantec presented yesterday at an STC seminar (I believe he's given the talk before elsewhere) on the advantages of sharing XML content chunks across product. During the talk he mentioned that a large number of their users (50%) simply "googled" for answers instead of using the docs or online help provided with the product.
They then changed their approach to make sure that product information was being picked up by search engines.
Have you found a similar use pattern with your users? We currently restrict the majority of our product information behind a customer-only portal, but if Google is replacing online help and manuals as a source of information and instruction that seems self-defeating.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Greetings to all. I'm a new member to this community. I'm interested in learning more about technical communication. While I'm not going to post one of those redundant questions of how to get into TC. I'm just exploring TC as a possible career since I've been working as a web designer past 10+ years including graphic design. I love learning new technologies in general. I just happened to love to write, either creatively or just documenting something. Does everyone have distinct writing style or follow a formula when it comes to technical writing? Is it possible to do contract work rather than a 9 to 5 job and work from home? Or the approach is the same as I would do as a web/graphic designer and treat it as a 'business' service?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Assembly Bill 10 in California proposes to negate the clause that anyone who makes more than $36 an hour or 75,000 annually an exempt employee and subject not overtime.
This is supposedly in response to class-action lawsuit brought about by Suns' writers, but many people feel it adds additional stigma to being a technical writer by removing salaried employee status.
What do you think? Should tech writers earning get overtime or should they get the respect of being a salaried employee?
Edit: Apologies. I misread that they were striking the salary cap clause from existing law.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Hello there tech writers!
I am a marketing communications writer and editor--have been for eight years--and am considering making a transition into technical writing. The demand in my area for tech writers seems to be greater than marketers at the moment, and I am not working right now. (I'm in the Raleigh-Durham, NC area--the land of tech and pharmaceutical companies--and recently relocated from Atlanta, if that makes any difference.) That being said, I am considering getting a continuing education certificate in technical writing. I took some tech writing classes in college, but that was in the early 90s, and these skills are not highlighted anywhere on my resume.
I am trying to decide if it's more important to have a general background in tech writing (as most of the online certificates seem to skew towards) or if I need to physically learn about authoring tools (Framemaker, RoboHelp, XML, etc.). Which area would you folks recommend I concentrate on? I'm sort of shying away from a full-blown degreed course at this time...the last time I was out of work, I got a continuing education certification in Web Marketing, and it seems to have worked out well for me--until now. I'm planning to stay in this area of the country for awhile, so it seems like this is as good a time as any to expand my skillset.
Any opinions on this subject would be much appreciated! I want to be sure that I'm making as informed a decision as possible, so I thought asking the people who do this for a living would be a good start.
Thanks in advance!
Christine
Current mood:  curious
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Hi! I'm the only tech writer employed by my company. It's fallen to me to create new FM templates in the long-term, but in the short-term, I have to make do with what the last technical writing manager created. (He's no longer with the company.) He didn't create an appendix template or a glossary template. I've created them, and they're fine. The issue is the TOC.
I have the Appendix HeadingTOC and Glossary TitleTOC formats. Neither one is automatically tabbed, so that the page number is right-aligned. I have looked at the other TOC formats, and they all appear to be the same, including a right-aligned tab stop in the same location. The other formats are tabbed automatically.
What am I missing?
Thanks very much!
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