Category: Word

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Of Interest: STC Education Online Course – Creating and Using a Department Style Guide

Wednesdays, 13 September to 1 November 2023  at 6:30 to 7:30 PM ET
(click here for your time zone)

Instructor: The TESIG’s own Kelly Schrank!

Registration closes 12 September 2023

Whether building a new department, working as a department of one, or joining a new or existing department, many technical communicators have found themselves working on documents without the benefit of a style guide.

In this course, as a group we will create a new style guide from scratch, incorporate common elements, and decide together what’s needed and what might be better relegated to other documents or resources. From grammar and punctuation to style and formatting, we’ll go through the process together. We’ll tackle this as the big project it is, by planning its scope and schedule, including tracking status, training others, and gathering feedback.

After the course, everyone will be emailed the finished document in Microsoft Word to use as is or as a template for their own style guide.

  • STC Members: $375
  • Gold Members: $300
  • Student Members: $295
  • Nonmembers: $595

To register, go to https://www.stc.org/course/creating-and-using-a-department-style-guide-september-2023/.

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Of Interest: Editing with Macros?!

A wise person once said, “Automate what you can automate!”
But can we automate some of our editing processes? Should we?

On Wednesday 22 June 2022 at 10 AM EDT (for
your local time zone, go to https://bit.ly/3LjzOv2), join Jennifer Yankopolus and Paul Beverley who will address the benefits of using macros to automate some editing tasks in Microsoft Word, and demonstrate a variety of macros written by Paul that technical editing practitioners can use to make their editing processes more efficient and focused.

This is an STC Technical Editing SIG event, and is open to both members and non-members.

To register for this event, go to https://bit.ly/3PoINOK.

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This Worked for Me: How Do You Want That Edited?

By Yoel Strimling

While technical editors might be great, most of us aren’t miracle workers. We have deadlines, resource issues, multiple tasks, and so on. While we want the documents we send to our readers to be as good as they can be, we realize that we can’t do everything, and that some sort of compromise needs to be made. The “golden triangle” of Good/Cheap/Fast calls on us to pick only two.

So what do we do? We have to let the document authors (be they technical communicators or engineers) know exactly what we can do and how long it will take us, and then help them plan accordingly. When everybody is “on the same page” and all expectations are clear, the editing process runs much smoother.

Continue reading “This Worked for Me: How Do You Want That Edited?”

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This Worked for Me: Three Collaboration Tools for Technical Editors Who Use Word

By Amanda Altamirano

Many businesses use Microsoft Word as their primary tool for creating documentation and other digital texts. Using Word can be challenging when performing edits with multiple subject matter experts (SMEs) and individual contributors with varied writing skill levels.

As a technical communicator who was tasked with managing product suite documentation in Word, I had to find ways to streamline technical editing. After months of trial and error, I found three collaboration tools that integrate with Word that worked for me.

Continue reading “This Worked for Me: Three Collaboration Tools for Technical Editors Who Use Word”
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Book Review: Effective Onscreen Editing (3rd edition)

by AElfwine Mischler

correctcoverHart, Geoff. 2016. Effective Onscreen Editing: New Tools for an Old Profession (3rd ed.). Diaskeuasis Publishing, 827 p. (PDF version).

 

Whether Word has ever tempted you to smash your computer or you just want to do some word processing task more quickly, you need this book.

Geoff Hart published the first edition of Effective Onscreen Editing nearly ten years ago. It was so popular that he wrote a second edition and has now produced a third. Continue reading “Book Review: Effective Onscreen Editing (3rd edition)”