The Official Publication of the STC Technical Editing SIG
Melanie G. Flanders
This is the Information Age. We are relentlessly inundated with more data than we could ever process in a dozen lifetimes. People don’t read documents for the sheer fun of it (unless it’s a good sci-fi or romance novel); they pick them up because they need specific information.
Jean Hollis Weber
Too many technical editors focus on the details and don’t pay enough attention to the bigger picture when reviewing documents.
Continue reading “Do Technical Editors Focus on the Wrong Things?”
Dan Voss
The Society’s newest SIG, the Special Needs (SN) SIG, is still looking for new members to support the SIG in its twin mission to assist technical communicators with disabilities in the practice of our profession and to provide all technical communicators with information that will help them make our communication products more accessible to users with disabilities. A detailed mission statement is available on the SIG’s Web site (www.stcsig.org/sn/index.shtml).
Continue reading “Taking the ‘Dis’ out of ‘Disabilities’: Special Needs SIG Seeks Support”
Lawrence Don-Elysyn
One of the true delights I’ve had as an editor is the checking of Warnings, Cautions, and Notes. It thrilled me to think that something I edited, if neglected, would lead to a fellow human being being fried to a crisp or to the destruction of a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment.
Julia Byrd
Technical writers have long searched for a writing method that’s easy to implement and use and that results in formatted documentation that pleases management, developers, and users alike. While some writers may still be searching for a one-size-fits-all method, many have adopted the Information Mapping method of organizing and formatting documentation and other printed materials.
Continue reading “Evaluating the Information Mapping Method”