Being cognizant of your environment and adapting accordingly is a good survival technique for any being (as Darwin recognized), and it’s particularly true in the professional world. And that’s why I’m puzzled by how much time tech writers spend agonizing over style and word choices in tech comm forums, on Twitter, and elsewhere.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it: distribute content as ebooks.
When it comes to a line of text, how long is too long? And do the rules for text column width change when content is rendered on different devices?
In which we uncover some unpleasant realities about distributing ebook editions.
In which we are boxed in by the limitations of DITA indexing support.
In reality, collaborative authoring is little more than a euphemism for the idea that “anyone can write.”
That’s Tom Johnson’s take on collaborative authoring in his latest blog post. The writer in me sympathizes deeply because the “anyone can write” attitude is a direct challenge to the careers of professional writers.
It can be a mightily sucktacular experience when you discover what other people think technical communicators do.
The stereotypical technical writer working in isolation is an endangered species—if not already extinct.
Knowing you can rely on someone is vital to professional relationships. But when it comes to proposing process change, the words “trust me” are never, ever enough.
