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Call for Submissions to Corrigo!

Do you have something to say that you think technical editing practitioners will find interesting? Then consider submitting it for publication on Corrigo!

You don’t need to be a member of the STC Technical Editing SIG – regardless of your official job title, we welcome and encourage everyone to read and submit to Corrigo.

Corrigo has lots of different feature categories:

You can submit short (1000 words or less), original content about subjects you think technical editing practitioners might find interesting, for example:

  • Stories about how applying technical editing skills increases reader satisfaction
  • Information about tools you find helpful
  • Hacks that you use to make your job easier
  • Tips about how to balance quality and deadlines
  • Vignettes about a day in your life as a technical editing practitioner
  • Links to sites you find helpful in your job, with explanations about how they help you
  • Reviews of articles, books, or events you’ve read or been to that relate to technical editing

We’re also looking for longer, more detailed original articles about topics that pertain to technical editing, both its theory and its practice.

Send your submissions to the Corrigo editor, Yoel Strimling, at editor@stc-techedit.org.
We’ll try to get back to you within three weeks with our decision. If we think changes need to be made to the submission before it is accepted, we’ll make suggestions.

If you want to discuss possible ideas for submission to Corrigo, send an email to Yoel, and he’ll be happy to listen.

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Of Interest: To Be More Efficient and Consistent, Build a Better Checklist

Anyone writing, editing, or managing any type of communication for a living is feeling the crunch. There is less time to create and edit; more types and formats of content; more apps, software, and systems to learn. And we expect quality, accuracy, and consistency from ourselves because we take pride in our work.

On 30 December 2020 at 3 PM EST, Kelly Schrank will discuss how to address a multitude of modern dilemmas with a relatively old-school hack: a checklist.

In this webinar, Kelly will teach you how to use a comprehensive checklist created and updated for a specific communication task to help you:

  • Differentiate workflows, systems, and activities
  • Spell out style and formatting details
  • Track your progress
  • Document metrics
  • Give you a sense of completion and peace of mind

This is a joint STC Technical Editing SIG, STC Santa Barbara, and STC Los Angeles event, and is open to members and non-members:

  • TE SIG members: $0
  • P&P SIG members: $0
  • Santa Barbara chapter members: $0
  • Los Angeles chapter members: $0
  • Students: $0
  • Other STC members: $10
  • Non-members: $20

To register, click here.

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Newbies’ Corner: User or Rulebook, Guide or Grammarian?

Editor’s Note: This is the first article in the Newbies’ Corner series, which is intended to give a platform to new, fresh voices, especially from those who are studying the field or just starting out. If you are a student learning about technical editing or just starting out on your technical editing journey, and would like to submit an article, please send an email to editor@stc-techedit.org.

by Nathan Richardson

As technical communicators and editors, we know about the importance of user-centered processes. There’s a growing demand for user experience (UX) writers and UX designers, and for building UX into our organization’s (or personal) content strategy from the start.

We also have a foundational commitment to “the rules.” Our work builds on reviewing content and suggesting changes in media, style, grammar, voice, and tone, among other things. We question the accuracy and completeness of a given communication and its content. For example, when editing a set of instructions, we could follow the steps, seeking errors or missing information. As technical editors, we may also try to break those instructions and identify their limits—which provides our authors with insights they might have missed. We also look for consistency, ensuring that, for example, fractional measurements are plural and consistent (think 0.7 inch vs. 0.7 inches, and within the same document .8 inches becomes 0.8 inches). We ask: are all references to other publications, articles, or patent-related prior art accurate?

Continue reading “Newbies’ Corner: User or Rulebook, Guide or Grammarian?”
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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?”