Here’s the scenario: You’re finishing up your latest HTML Help project…no more late nights or weekends…back to a “normal” 50-hour work week. That’s when the development team lead strolls into your ...

Editor’s Note: The following piece, by Jean Hollis Weber, is part of our collection of “classics”–articles that stand the test of time no matter how many technologies come and go. Don’t forget to ...

At this point in this series, I am going to start looking at the algorithms of structured writing. An algorithm is a formalized method for performing a task. We often associate algorithms with ...

Following a successful presentation to STC Phoenix on Plain Language and Simplified Technical English, NAU Senior Lecturer Erika Konrad and alumna Karen Field Carroll joined TechWhirl for a Fast 5 ...

In the modern “fake news” era, “facts” are increasingly flexible rather than tangible, provable, stable things. People increasingly accept opinions and gut feelings as more valid than expert knowledge ...

At some point in your technical writing career, you may find yourself in a position where you are responsible not only for your own output, but also the output of other writers under you. In other ...

One of my former students writes for a healthcare products company. Recently, his colleagues asked him to deliver a workshop for them about writing. We had a long conversation on how he prepared this ...

I once received a long writing sample from a technical communication applicant who had written about a complex medical device. The sample demonstrated all the marks of quality: clean and consistent ...

I have followed Tom Johnson, the founder of I’d Rather Be Writing, since 2006, when I officially began my career as a technical writer. I was a fan of his back when he lived in Utah, before his big ...

In my 30 years as an editor and technical writer, I’ve seen endless examples of how readers can misinterpret texts. In the most egregious cases, I’ve even seen authors misinterpret their own writing, ...

Most technical communicators have worked for employers that mistook activity for productivity and have tried to teach our bosses the difference between churning out words and crafting useful ...

All structured writing must eventually be published. Publishing structured content mean transforming it from the domain in which it was created (subject domain, document domain, or the abstract end of ...