Name: Jaya Choudhury
I’ve been into technical communication for: 5 years, 6 months.
At work: I handle the documentation tasks – planning and management, authoring, graphics, proofreading, maintenance and delivery of a large suite of documents and configuration management tasks, along with [...]
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Archive for the ‘Lounge’ Category
November, 2012 § in Unwind
The joy of dancing
September, 2012 § in Lounge
Writing tips
Focus on your user (not the product feature)
The goal of the reader is to accomplish a certain task; using your product for that task is of secondary importance. Show the user how to do that task or tell the user why the task should be done.
See these examples and decide for yourself which one you [...]
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S-miles to go before you sleep!
By Manjula Kandula
A prospective recruiter once asked me: if there was anything in your career that you would have done differently, what would it be?
I did answer his question in a modest way at that time, but now, years later, I have found a revised version to my answer.
Right from my school day[...]
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July, 2012 § in Lounge
Am not just a writer!
By Rithu Kumble
“Oh, you are a technical writer, so you work on PDFs.” “I have written a document, can you format it for me?” “I have written functional specifications in the past, so can I join your team?” How often have we heard these words from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances?[...]
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Plane spotting with Sriram Hariharan
Name – Sriram Hariharan
I’ve been into technical communication for – 3 years 11 months
At work – I’m a Senior Technical Writer at ViSolve, Inc. I create client documentation for the healthcare business. I also head the marketing team.
My hobby – Aviation photography and plane [...]
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July, 2012 § in Lounge
Writing tips
Do not turn nouns into verbs
Nouns are nouns and verbs are verbs, and never the twain must be swapped.
Here are some examples where these roles have, indeed, been swapped. These sentences mutilate the English language and are, besides, difficult to understand by non-English speakers and by the aut[...]
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April, 2012 § in Lounge
Automatic Editorial Review
As part of the Documentation Development Life Cycle, after finalizing a document, technical communicators send it out for an editorial review. This process helps them ensure documentation quality.
However, in organizations where a formal editorial review is an integral part of the documentation pro[...]
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March, 2012 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Writing Tips
1. Place the word “only” closest to the word that it modifies. The meaning of a sentence changes with the placement of “only”.
You can have a look at the video here.
2. Place the result before the action. Else, you might have unintended consequences.
Techwriting examples i[...]
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March, 2012 § in Lounge
Gains, Gains and only gains at the Chennai conference!
Ever since i started my career in Technical Writing, STC India Chapter has always enabled me to learn about latest tools and tricks that helped me to do my job faster and better. After applying the lessons learnt from STC learning sessions, I leveraged the capabilities of the latest tools and best [...]
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December, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Smartphones Smarter with Assistance
Introduction
Times have changed! Most grandparents hardly struggle with cell phones today. Parents are active members of social networking sites and at times, share friends with us. Domestic help asks for a phone reminder to get bread, next morning. Well, life without mobile phones is history!
Long[...]
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December, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Who should manage a government portal? You!
Rachel
Recently I was asked this question in an interview: ‘Who should manage a government portal; IT people, marketing people or the content team?’
Turf wars have been fought over this ever since the Web first appeared, but the question never goes away. Ownership and management of any large we[...]
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Decoding Science Writing
Manjula Kandula
Dolly, the world’s first cloned sheep was born on 5 July 1996. It was an epoch-making milestone in science and opened the door to understanding creation. Noted science journalist Gina Kolata broke the news nationally in The New York Times and was the first reporter to speak with D[...]
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November, 2011 § in Lounge
Writing Tips
Anindita Basu
Do not repeat the text of the title in the first sentence of your topic.
When your topic gets pulled into search results, what is displayed is the title of the topic (in the form of a link) and the first few words in that topic. If the first sentence of the topic uses the [...][...]
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November, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
When Worlds Collide: Understanding How Documentation and Translation Processes Affect Each Other
By Kit Brown-Hoekstra
Companies that successfully integrate translation into the documentation and product development process reap the financial benefits of simultaneous global releases, high quality products that meet the needs of all their customers, regardless of locale, and improved percep[...]
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September, 2011 § in Lounge
Writing Tips
When you must include specific product names, version numbers, file paths, window names, wizard panes, field-box names etc. that might change during the SDLC, do not hard code them. Use variables. If writing with DITA, use conrefs; if writing with MS Word, use fields; if writing with any other h[...]
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July, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Technical communication trends: How we can meet the challenges
By Larry Kunz
We are part of a profession that is undergoing rapid change. Several trends, spurred on by advances in technology and by the world economy, affect us. We need to understand what these trends mean to us as professionals, and we need to recognize how we can influence these trends.
The [...]
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July, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Technical Communicators as Heuristics Reviewers
By Devika Ganapathy
A few years ago, I worked as a usability specialist at a large technology and services company based in Bangalore. The design unit at this company comprised a large team of nearly a 100 people – mainly interaction designers, but also several visual designers, information a[...]
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April, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Essential skills for Technical Writers in 2011
When I was a science journalist earlier on in my career, a good friend invited me to join a leading software company as a technical editor. I began to weigh the pros and cons of staying or leaving the Fourth Estate.
I reasoned to myself that being part of the Press was challenging and offered me [.[...]
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February, 2011 § in Lounge, WriteManager
Gone in Sixty Seconds?
Anindita Basu
Sixty seconds is what Nicolas Cage got to steal a car. You get less than 60 seconds to steal the attention of your readers and get them on to your help page. The first 10 words on any page take less than 10 seconds to read and understand, and those words are the ones [...][...]
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February, 2011 § in Lounge
Applying the Wideband Delphi Method for Estimating Documentation Effort
Bindu Nayar
Do you feel that estimating the documentation effort required for a project is nothing short of predicting the future? This view is strengthened when the estimates are inaccurate and the project is plagued with variance in scope and delays in delivery.
Any project is controlled by four [...]
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