Posts

Posted on

Interviewing the Subject Matter Expert

Daniel Hart

When you interview the subject matter expert, you witness that most vulnerable act—thought sorted on the fly. For a productive and humane exchange, offer a sympathetic ear attuned to clarity and rapport.

Attend, and Listen

Acoustic space is in a way a vast interior in the center of which the listener finds himself together with his interlocutors. The oral-aural individual thus does not find himself simply situated somewhere in neutral, visual-tactile, Copernican space. Rather, he finds himself in a vast kind of interiority. (Walter J. Ong, S.J., The Presence of the Word [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967], 164)

The subject matter expert—indeed, any oral communicator—manages Walter J. Ong’s “vast … interiority,” a resource even more unwieldy than the written word. The successful interviewer is both chief prompter and sympathetic ear. Regardless of your foreknowledge, show deference. Listen to learn, mentor shared understanding.

Establish Rapport

“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
(Alan Greenspan quoted by Daniel Kadlec. “Summing Up Greenspan,” Time, Friday, December 15, 2000. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,91998,00.html(external link))

The subject matter expert—including the writer—knows more than you do, or at least knows what you would. For example, the software developer famously commands intimidating esoterica that tongue-tie even the confident layperson.

Be well researched and therefore, unafraid. Understand the lingua franca before you use it. Record this moment, not the one for which you fastidiously prepared. Remember your ally, the end user, who needs clear, correct, and concise prose.

Set the Pace

Take time to understand the non sequitur. Do not fear silence. Consider author Sinclair Lewis’s “test of quietness,” the unspoken understandings shared by friends. (Sinclair Lewis, Babbit [New York: Penguin Books, 1996], 209)

A deliberative pause during the interview need be no less rich. It begs reiteration (that commits the subject matter expert further) and buys time for a follow-up question based in pertinence, not panic.

Question

Communication scholars have come to recognize that culture is a primary determinant of all communication behaviors – including listening – because one’s culture essentially serves to define who one is and how one will communicate through one’s perceptual filter. (A.D. Wolvin and C.G. Coakley, Listening [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996],125)

Our perceptual filters root stubbornly in task necessities, personal history, and corporate culture. Contest your assumptions. Welcome surprise. Corroborate for fact and fluency.

However, sincere engagement is not naïve. Let implication guide query. Brave contradiction. Elucidate the opaque and catalogue nuance, for either this document or the next.

Remember: the unasked question haunts.

Self-efface

Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don’t anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you’re always trying for a topper you aren’t really listening. It ruins communication. (“Groucho Marx,” Wikipedia: The Free Encylopedia, http://www. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho Marx(external link) (accessed September 19, 2010))

OK, you are smarter than this so-called subject matter expert. (Your goldfish could beat him at marbles.) Nevertheless, want more, like an apprentice. Be insatiable.

Map from Ear to There

Finally, furnish thoughtful inquiry—not the fillip of good manners, but protocols for cooperation. Successfully map “vast … interiority” to the written word, and the reader will see what you heard.

Posted on

Transferring Presentations to Publication: A New Challenge

Carie Lambert

Frequently, when authors present at a conference, they organize their ideas, draft their notes, submit an abstract, and then present from the notes at the conference. After which, they may write a full paper and publish an article using information from a presentation and attendees’ feedback.

However, my role as an editor has recently added a new element to my tasks: to take another professional’s presentation and adapt the presentation into a format for publication in a journal. This is a new task for me as an editor but one that I believe is very valuable, particularly for professionals who present well but do not have the time or the skill to organize or write a document into a format acceptable for a journal article.

Many of my physician clients struggle to fulfill their clinical and teaching responsibilities and complete their research; therefore, they are eager to hire an experienced editor who can assist with preparing their data for publication. I believe being able to transpose a presentation transcript to a publishable manuscript is a skill that will help my clients and thus add to my consulting business.

The Background of the Project

In October 2009, an internist from the school of medicine at Northwestern University contacted me with a new project. We had worked together before: I had edited a textbook with him and also helped transpose conference papers into a full issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

For this new project, the physician proposed a new type of editing project. As the president of a medical research organization, he had organized a conference during which approximately 15 speakers—including a senator, several government representatives, the directors of two nonprofit organizations, and a recent oncology patient—participated in panels and talked about the current state of medical research in the United States. The speakers did not submit any written documents before or after their presentations. However, the organization had recorded the entire conference (with the presenters’ knowledge, of course) and then paid to obtain a transcript of the conference proceedings.

My client had an idea: Why not have a technical editor transfer the transcript from a script of the conference panel presentations to manuscripts that could be published in the journal for the medical research organization.

Challenges of the Process

I was fascinated because a project like this would create a new editing challenge for me. Instead of working with written documents from the authors, I would be working with transcripts of their presentations: i.e., oral documents . I would need to work through the documents as I would a traditional manuscript:

  • To eliminate grammar issues;
  • To ensure clear and concise style;
  • To edit for accuracy;
  • To note, add, and check references and citations; and
  • To format the document per the journal’s publication style.

In addition, I would need to transpose these documents from oral to written presentation.

I agreed to take on the project, not knowing what all the job would entail, but excited about a new experience. As I worked, I came across other challenges, such as inconsistencies between manuscripts and the complicated visuals that I needed to integrate into the text as narrative. In addition to editing manuscripts as I had in the past, I

  • Determined where the authors needed to cite references,
  • Adapted slides, handouts, and the visual aids in those documents into the text,
  • Transposed the content to reflect a written tone and eliminated conversational elements and verbal “noise.”

The authors cited statistics to support their arguments but rarely said the source of the statistics. Therefore, as I worked through the document, I marked where the speaker needed to cite a resource. For some statistics, I was able to retrieve the document from my institution’s library’s electronic database and Internet search engines. For others, I noted that the author was missing a reference and noted in-text and end-of-text citation locations.

Several of the authors had slides with detailed visual aids to show the audience as the authors spoke. Frequently, the authors would say (as documented in the transcript), “as you can see here” or “see this?” or gave general references to the slides. While I included some of those visual aids as figures in the manuscripts, I also had to introduce them and explain what the author might have inferred or physically indicated.

In the same way, the authors tended to take a more informal tone in their presentations, using slang and allowing verbal noise—e.g., “like,” “uh,” “So,…,” and other distracters—that created a less formal tone in the presentation and that were inappropriate for a well-written journal article.

I also dealt with incomplete information that resulted from the speaker following his or her thought process rather than the structure that the speaker established at the beginning of the presentation. As I worked through these documents, I learned not only about the state of medical research in the nation but also about new strategies that I could use as a technical editor.

Conclusion

As technical communicators, we may anticipate that we will work from print documents to create new documents or we may interview the source of information and transform our notes into the needed document. However, rarely do we work from an oral document for which we did not witness the presentation. The complications that come from a transcript rather than from a previously written document differ, particularly because most people do not speak as formally as they write.

The skill to work from a transcript—to edit and transpose an oral document to a formal written document—is a service that could benefit me professionally as well as benefit my clients, who may not have the time or energy to write and format a manuscript after fulfilling their clinical, teaching, and research responsibilities. As a technical communicator, I can assist them in preparing presentations for publication. I enjoyed the project because I was able to research while I edited and helped a busy client publish information that was very important.

Personal Note

I appreciate the honor of receiving the Diane Feldman Technical Editing scholarship. The scholarship will help me as I complete my coursework and begin my dissertation research. Thank you very much for supporting me in my education and the profession.

Carie Lambert has won the 2010 Diane Feldman Technical Editing SIG Graduate Scholarship.

Posted on

Achieving Consistency Among Editors

Pat Moell

Introduction

I manage a group of editors at a software company. This topic describes how we strive to achieve consistency in editing software documentation among a group of editors both within a department and across divisions in a large company. We have a staff of 14 editors that serve five large writing departments. Our editors are excellent grammarians before they come to SAS, but they also get considerable training and mentoring in SAS specific guidelines when they join our staff. I acknowledge that it’s impossible to achieve 100% consistency across all editors, but consistency is worth striving for for several reasons.

Importance of Consistency

Consistency is necessary to enhance readability, to promote clarity, to hold a book together, to provide polish, to prevent confusion, and to establish credibility. It’s especially important for the user, who expects a certain look and feel across software and software documentation.

Technical editors strive to achieve consistency both within and across documents that they edit for a particular company style. A recognizable company style helps maintain the brand and helps users predict the organization of content. Editorial consistency also helps greatly reduce the cost of translation (one meaning for one term, for example, means that the term and definition need be translated only once per language).

Methods of Achieving Consistency

Here are some ways we strive to achieve consistency in our organization.

Well-written and well-maintained in-house style guides and style sheets
At SAS we have two different style guides within the company. The SAS Style Guide for Business is maintained by Corporate Communications and it follows the AP style. The SAS Style Guide for User Documentation follows the Chicago Manual of Style and is maintained by the Technical Editing Department. Neither style guide tries to reinvent the wheel. Our style guides are very specific to SAS and to the choices we have made. We also have style sheets with decisions appropriate to each product that we’re documenting. If there are multiple editors on a project, they each use the same style sheet and help in contributing to it.

Agreement about which reference books have primary authority
If what we’re looking for is not in the SAS Style Guide, we have a particular order we follow. We first check the Chicago Manual of Style and then the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. Our dictionary is Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition. We also have other important references we use such as the list of official SAS product names and the trademark list. We also have a term base where we check on official terminology.

Discussion and decision making among editors –establishing rules
If we’re still not sure of a decision after consulting our resources, we have several avenues to reach consensus. We have regular biweekly meetings of our staff, and we discuss items and make decisions about them at this meeting. If we need consensus earlier, we can poll the editors through e-mail. Decisions are recorded. If it’s a term that needs a definition, we can send it to the terminologist for further research and consensus. We also have a terminology review board in Editing that handles the editing decisions regarding terminology. They publish their decision to an archived e-mail site. It also goes to the editors and writers. The archived site is handy for reviewing the decisions.

Collaboration with other writers and editors within the company about which sets of guidelines to follow
As mentioned previously, we have the SAS Style Guide for User Documentation and the SAS Style Guide for Business. We are reaching different audiences, and we have agreed to edit according to what is customary for that audience. We have writers in India, in Austin, in Massachusetts, and in other places. Some of them are fully hooked into our style guides and processes and others are not because the companies have recently been bought. When we buy a company, we establish a liaison with the writing staff and educate them about our company style. Only after their software has been incorporated as part of ours and built according to our processes do we fully integrate them into our tool sets, guidelines, and processes. In many but not all cases, our department provides the editorial support for their writing staff. We also have some major products that require considerable documentation and that require several editors. These editors meet with the writers regularly to establish the style sheets, work out specific guidelines for those documents, and agree on processes.

Information models for various types of documents such as user’s guides, help topics, and administrator’s guides
We have an Information Models Team consisting of writers and editors that has reviewed the various types of documents that we produce and has provided an information model for each of these types of documents (for example, a Getting Started guide, a user’s guide, help, an administrator’s guide, or a reference document). Writers and editors are expected to follow these models when they write and edit. This helps achieve consistency within types of documents.

Peer reviews and manager reviews of edits
We also have regular manager reviews of edits so that if one editor is off track in some way, we can catch it and help provide training. From time to time we also have peer reviews of edits.

Mentoring and training of new editors in company style and global English guidelines
A mentor also reviews edits of a new editor and provides feedback so that the new editor can more quickly learn our style conventions. We also have formal training in using our style guide and in following global English guidelines. This training is provided both to new editors and to new writers and is also available as Webcast presentations. We follow the basic principles in The Global English Style Guide in an effort to make our documentation more easily translated and more consistent.

A standard company terminology, one definition per term or concept
Two of our editors are our company terminologists. They work with marketing people, with programmers in research and development, with writers, editors, Tech Support, and others to decide on one definition per term or concept. Sometimes this is not possible because different industries will use different terms for the same concept or the same term for different concepts. In those cases, we need to have multiple entries in the term base, much as a dictionary does. A standard terminology is extremely important because it helps greatly reduce the cost of translation. If a term means one thing, it can be translated once and its definition translated once and then stored in translation memory.

Editing tools with rules enforcement such as Acrocheck, grammar and spell checkers, and completeness checks
One of our best tools and one that helps us greatly with productivity is Acrocheck. One of our editors is an experienced linguistic analyst who customizes Acrocheck for our needs. Acrocheck flags grammar, spelling, and other mistakes and suggest a correct alternative. We have our writers use this tool first, and then we have the editors use it, too, when they get the documents for edit. The editors have a more detailed set of rules, especially the rules that apply sometimes and not others. We use XML in our Arbortext Editor authoring tool, and the writers cannot commit their files unless their files are in context. So this is also a help in knowing that the writer has tagged the content properly enough so that the files can be committed.

Editing for Consistency

Individual editors as they edit also edit for consistency within and across documentation sets. They check to see that the organization is consistent, the figures and captions are represented appropriately, the headings, lists, etc. are done according to the Style Guide.

Some Reasons for Not Editing Consistently

Sometimes styles change over time, and there are times when we do not try to be consistent entirely with our previous documentation. Some small examples are we changed from data as plural to data as singular and we changed the capitalization of product names in some cases. Because our doc sets are so large, we do not go back to legacy documentation to make changes. Doing so is costly and not worth the effort. Instead, we make the changes going forward. We also sometimes agree that different fields use the same concepts with different terms, and we decide to live with that. For example, some fields use terms such as table, column, row, and others use terms such as observation and variable.

Summary

Again, there is no way to make everything consistent. Editors are not always consistent with themselves let alone other editors. But there are many best practices you can put in place to improve consistency. And consistency is important, especially to maintain a recognizable brand for your company, to help the user predict and understand the organization of content, to keep writers from getting confused by different emphases and contradictory advice by different editors, and to greatly reduce translation costs.

Pat manages the Technical Editing Department at SAS Institute Inc., a global software company, in Cary, North Carolina.

Posted on

A First-Timer’s Experience at the Technical Editing SIG Progression: Editing Challenges and Opportunities

Dan Riechers

As a first-time attendee of the STC Summit, I wasn’t sure how a progression worked. A helpful person at the STC information booth explained the concept.

Topic presenters simultaneously host tables in one of the conference ballrooms. Attendees join the table with the concept about which they would like to learn. Every fifteen to twenty minutes a bell rings, signaling attendees to change tables. This pattern continues for 75 minutes. All conference attendees, not just SIG members, are welcome to attend. At the Technical Editing SIG progression, I participated in four mini-sessions.

I began at Jeffrey Japp’s table, whose sign-tent read, “When Everyone is an Editor.” I thought, “OK, that sounds like my team.” Turned out Jeffrey is from Asheville, N.C., which is approximately 160 miles from my home in Raleigh, N.C. He began the session with a brief discussion about accepting criticism from colleagues with varied experience levels, using standard stylistic guidelines, reaching consensus, and choosing your battles. Participants shared anecdotes and suggestions. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of not having a dedicated editing staff, and it was time to move on to another table.

Next up was Andrea Wenger’s “Strategies for Simplicity.” Andrea quickly reviewed technical communication editing and writing principles in sentence structure, grammar, parts of speech, punctuation, and word choice. She also provided a reference list, available on the Technical Editing SIG web site. Andrea’s handout will serve as a useful review tool for my technical writing team, which is ironically, located just 3 miles from Andrea’s in Knightdate, NC.

After a brief look at the remaining topics, I joined Patricia Moell from SAS Institue Inc., which is located in Cary, NC—only a few miles outside of Raleigh. At Pat’s table, we discussed “Achieving Consistency among Editors.” She offered best practices and advice from her experience with a team of editors. Pat’s presentation was tightly focused on consistency—when to use it, when to be flexible, and why it is important.

Finally, I joined Kathleen Mohar’s table “Section 508 Compliance—What Editors Need to Know.” My employer does some work with the federal government and this session provided a quick entry point into the topic. First, Kathleen educated us about this federal law, an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 508 requires that federal agencies’ documents are accessible and applies to most documentation paid for with federal funds. Kathleen shared some of her experience with compliance at RTI International, located in Research Triangle Park, NC—just around the corner from Raleigh. Participants related their experiences and lessons and asked questions.

In 75 minutes I was able to learn from folks who work with teams of editors and those who share editing duties among the writing team. In addition to reviewing technical communication best practices and learning new information from presenters, the participants in the mini-sessions also offered valuable tips and insights. For example, one participant offered a book reference, another offered a story about a difficult interaction with a fellow writer/editor, and another relayed her experience with Section 508 compliance.

Attending the STC Summit was an invaluable experience. The learning opportunities provide a real return on investment to my current employer, and the chance to meet fellow communicators from around the world and share a sense of camaraderie provided a renewed sense of the field. Valuable in a different way was the fact that I happened to sit at the tables of four folks from my current home state of North Carolina. Small world.

For summaries of the sessions, see the attached files below.

Section508Compliance_kathleen

WhenEveryoneIsanEditor_japp

And, for the best practices on “Achieving Consistency among Editors,” see the article:
Achieving Consistency Among Editors.

Posted on

Working Effectively with Global Teams

Mary Van Brink

Introduction

At Abbott, my editing responsibilities revolve around the validation of computerized systems. The global computerized systems validation team includes members from Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, and the United States.

We use a document repository system that enables us to electronically create, edit, and route documents for review and approval. This document repository system ensures that only one person has control of a document at a time from anywhere around the world. Formal change control enables the revision of documents. Some of the challenges that our global computerized systems validation team encounters are differing time zones, lack of proximity, and communication. To mitigate these problems, consider employing the following strategies:

Assignments

When you receive an assignment, repeat the request back to the person to be sure that you completely understand the goals and timelines. Follow up with an e-mail to confirm your understanding. Attempt to communicate with your authors in their native language. Try closing an e-mail or speaking phrases during a conversation in the author’s language. This endears you to them because you are attempting to communicate, even if your accent is atrocious. Prettig weekend en tot maandag. (That’s Dutch for “Have a nice weekend and talk to you next Monday.”)

Deadlines

If the deadline is approaching, send an e-mail to explain your progress and to remind the author that you are actively working on the request. If for any reason you are unable to make the deadline, contact the author immediately so you can negotiate a new deadline.

Differing Time Zones

Because global members may work across several time zones, be considerate as you coordinate meetings. Vary the meeting times to ensure that the same people aren’t always inconvenienced.

Editing

When it comes to editing, it doesn’t matter that an author has been a writer for 25 years. Everyone needs an editor. As an author, how often have you become so engrossed with the content that you don’t notice the mistakes anymore? It happens to all of us. Encourage your authors to relinquish their documents to an editor who can see the content with fresh eyes.

English as a Second Language (ESL)

English is usually the official language for global documentation. If you have ever read instructions that were written by a non-English-speaking author and then translated, you understand the problems you will encounter as you edit the work of ESL authors. You must determine the message that the author is trying to convey before you can help finalize content.

Lack of Proximity

Proximity is related to time. Be mindful that you may not be able to get an immediate response to your questions and plan accordingly.

Style Guide

Maintaining a simple style guide is a must. Post the style guide to a team site where the authors can access the content electronically. Have you ever encountered a belligerent author who is convinced that they don’t need an editor? Having a style guide to reference diffuses the situation and provides an opportunity to teach the author. It insures that there documents are as affective as possible. Did you jump out of your skin while reading the mistakes? Just checking to see if you’re paying attention!

Templates

It is vital to standardize the use of English in global documents. To that end, use boilerplate templates to aid the creation of documents. Using templates prompts the author for required information, and the documents have a consistent look and feel. One of the most difficult tasks for an editor is to perceive what’s missing. A consistent structure simplifies identifying missing information.