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A different take on Twittering and technical writers
Tuesday, June 02, 2009 — posted by Sheila Loring
Technical writers abound on Twitter as do blog posts on how Twitter can make you a better tech writer.I'd Rather Be Writing has an alternate take in the article Following the NBA Can Make You a Better Writer. Tom Johnson uses the analogy of Kobe Bryant and Lebron James playing their respective positions on the court. He argues that unless you're a one-person shop, you're doing yourself a disservice by trying to be a Jack- or Jill-of-all-trades. Play up your strengths, and minimize your weaknesses, tech writers. Read Tom's article for more.
Labels: technical writing, Twitter
2:02 PM Permalink | |
How Twitter makes you a better writer
Wednesday, April 01, 2009 — posted by Sheila Loring
To Twitter or not to Twitter? That's the question many technical writers I know face these days. Critics say writing in 140 characters or less is ruining our ability to communicate effectively and follow grammatical rules.
In the following article, Jennifer Blanchard argues that Twittering actually improves your skills as a writer:
http://www.copyblogger.com/twitter-writing/
Labels: technical writing, Twitter
1:42 PM Permalink | |
Is Twitter down and why should I care?
Monday, March 02, 2009 — posted by Sheila Loring
http://istwitterdown.com is a very simple web site for checking the status of Twitter in one word -- YES or NO. If you're a Twitterer, you know this question is annoying and not uncommon.If you're not a Twitterer, check it out (http://www.twitter.com). Twitter allows you to quickly and easily communicate with friends, colleagues, or complete strangers who choose to "follow" you. You type in a 140-character message explaining what you're doing or thinking (preferably things that are interesting to your followers). These messages are displayed on your followers' home pages.
You should be following Scriptorium and its employees on Twitter. We tweet about XML, DITA, FrameMaker, conferences, and other industry talk in addition to random stuff, such as handy web sites we come across or tips and tricks we pick up throughout the day. And, of course, some tweets are completely frivolous (for example, how to make pixel cookies). It's fun having a way to share these things with people around the globe in seconds.
Here are links to our Twitter accounts:
Sarah O'Keefe
Alan Pringle
Sheila Loring
Simon Bate
Terry Smith
ScriptoriumTech (for announcements and the latest Scriptorium news)
All sorts of companies and individuals have Twitter accounts:
Palm
Whole Foods
CNN
Apple
Society for Technical Communication (STC), Chicago chapter
STC Accessibility SIG
STC France chapter
John Cleese
Anderson Cooper
Tina Fey
David Lynch
For a longer list of celebrity Tweeters, see http://http://www.celebritytweet.com/.
Technical communicators, there's even a group for us: http://twittgroups.com/group/techcomms. Include "#techcomms" in your message to tweet the group once you've joined.
So join us on Twitter and respond to this post with your user name. I'd love to follow you.
Labels: Twitter
3:36 PM Permalink | |
How to trim your Twitter feed
Friday, January 30, 2009 — posted by Sheila Loring
Receive too many Twitter's throughout the day? You might not want to receive every @reply I send to my followers, so weed them out by doing this:Go to http://twitter.com/account/notifications
Change @replies to read “Show me @replies to the people I am following.”
This apparently is the default setting, because it's already selected in my preferences, and I haven't touched them.
From Chris Brogan's blog:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/unswamp-your-twitter-feed/
2:00 AM Permalink | |