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Author: Alan Pringle

Opinion

Cardinal sin of blog (and technical) writing: making the reader feel stupid

Want to get me riled up? You can easily achieve that by making me feel stupid while reading your blog.

I read a lot of blogs about technology, and I’ll admit that I’m on the periphery of some of these blogs’ intended audiences. That being said, there is no excuse for starting a blog entry like this:

Everyone’s heard of Gordon Moore’s famous Law, but not everyone has noticed how what he said has gradually morphed into a marketing message so misleading I’m surprised Intel doesn’t require people to play the company jingle just for mentioning it.

Well, I must not be part of the “everyone” collective because I had to think long and hard about “Gordon Moore’s famous law,” and I drew a blank. (Here’s a link for those like me who can’t remember or don’t know what Moore’s Law is.)

Making a broad generalization such as “everyone knows x” is always dangerous. This is true in blog writing as well as in technical writing. In our style guide, we have a rule that writers should “not use simple or simply to describe a feature or step.” By labeling something as simple, it’s guaranteed you will offend someone who doesn’t understand the concept. For example, while editing one of our white papers about the DITA Open Toolkit, I saw the word “simply” and took great delight in striking through it. From where I stand, there is little that is “simple” about the toolkit, particularly when you’re talking about configuring output.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that a blog entry, white paper, or user manual about very technical subjects has to explain every little thing. You need to address the audience at the correct level, which can be a delicate balancing act with highly technical content: overexplaining can also offend the reader. For example, in a user manual, it’s probably wise to explain up front the prerequisite knowledge. Also consider offering resources where the reader can get that knowledge: that way, you get around explaining concepts but still offer assistance to readers who need it.

In the case of online content and blog entries, you can link to definitions of terms and concepts: readers who need help can click the links to get a quick refresher course on the information, and those who don’t can keep on reading. The author of the blog post in question could have inserted a link to Moore’s Law.  Granted, he does define the law in the second paragraph, but he lost me with the  “everyone has heard”  bit at the start.

That “everyone has heard” assumption brings me back to my primary point: don’t make your readers feel stupid, particularly by making sweeping assumptions about what “everyone” knows or by labeling something as “simple.” Insulted readers move on—and may never come back.


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Opinion

The good manager litmus test: process change

For Kai Weber, a good manager is pivotal in making a job satisfying:

It’s the single most important factor in my satisfaction with a job. Nothing else shapes my memory and my judgment of a past job as much.

What really tests the mettle of a manager is how he or she handles process change. A good manager is absolutely critical when a documentation department switches to new authoring and publishing processes, particularly when moving from a desktop publishing environment to an XML-based one. Without good management, the implementation of new processes will likely fail. (I’ve seen bad management kill an implementation, and it’s ugly.)

So, what does a good manager do to ensure a smooth(er) transition? From my point of view, they will take the following actions (and this list is by no means all encompassing):

  • Demonstrate the value of the change to both upper management and those in the trenches. A manager can often get the approval from upper management on a workflow change by showing cost savings in localization expenses, for example; (less) money talks to those higher up on the corporate chain. But mentions of reduced costs don’t usually warm the hearts of those who are doing the work. A good manager should show team members how the new process eliminates manual drudgery that everyone hates, explain how authors can focus more on writing good content instead of on secondary tasks (such as formatting), and so on. Demonstrating how the team’s work experience improves is more important than showing improvements in the bottom line—even though the cost savings are a result of  those very changes. There is also the angle of professional development for a staff  moving to a new environment; more on that in the next bullet.
  • Ensure those working in the new process understand the new tools and technologies by offering training/knowledge transfer. A good manager knows that changing processes and not including some sort of training as part of the transition is foolish; knowledge transfer should be part of the project cost. Sure, not all companies can afford formal classroom training, but there are less expensive options to consider. Web-based training is very cost effective, particularly when team members are geographically dispersed. Another option is training one or two team members and then having them share their expertise with the rest of the group (“train the trainer”). The benefits of knowledge transfer are two-fold: team members can ramp up on the new processes in less time (thereby more quickly achieving the cost savings that upper management likes so much), and the team members themselves gain new skills in their profession. A good manager recognizes that training benefits both the company as a whole and individual employees (and he or she can help team members recognize how they benefit in the long term professionally from learning new skills).
  • Know the difference between staff members who are bringing up legitimate issues with the new workflow and those who are being recalcitrant just to maintain the status quo. During periods of change, a manager will get pushback from staff. That’s a given. However, that pushback is a very healthy thing because it can point out deficiencies in the new process. A good manager will take feedback, consider it, and modify the process when there are weaknesses. Addressing genuine feedback in such a manner can also help a manager win “converts” to the new process.  However, there may be an employee (or two) who won’t be receptive to change, regardless of how well the manager has explained the change, how much training is offered, and so on. In these cases, the manager may need to consider other assignments for that employee: for example, maintaining legacy documentation in the old system, particularly when that employee’s domain knowledge is too important to lose. There are more unpleasant options (including termination) the manager may need to consider if the recalcitrant team member isn’t providing other value to the organization as a whole. Basically, a good manager won’t let one individual poison the working environment for everyone else.

I will be the first to say that these tasks are not easy, particularly dealing with an employee who is utterly against change. But managers need to address all of the preceding issues to ensure a smooth transition and to keep the work environment positive and productive for the staff as a whole.

I won’t even pretend I have covered all the issues managers need to address when a department changes workflows, and each company will face its own particular challenges because of differences in corporate culture, and so on. If you’ve been through a workflow transition, please share your experiences in the comments: I’d love to hear from both managers and team members on what worked well (and what didn’t) in how management handled the changes.

PS: You can read a more detailed discussion about managing process change in our white paper, Managing implementation of structured authoring (HTML and PDF).

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Humor Opinion

Finding the blogging superhero in yourself

Power blogger.

That’s a new phrase to me, and it was new to Maria Langer, too, as she noted in her An Eclectic Mind blog. As part of a podcast panel, she was asked to offer advice on how to become a power blogger. Some of her fellow panelists mentioned the quantity of posts, but Maria’s focus was elsewhere:

The number of blog posts a blogger publishes should have nothing to do with whether he’s a power blogger. Instead, it should be the influence the blogger has over his readership and beyond. What’s important is whether a blog post makes a difference in the reader’s life. Does it teach? Make the reader think? Influence his decisions? If a blogger can consistently do any of that, he’s a power blogger.

I couldn’t agree more. I appreciate reading any blog that gives me useful information or analysis that hadn’t occurred to me. For example, I recently had issues with a new PC I’m using at home as a media center. It was not picking up all the channels in my area, and an excellent blog post helped me solve the problem with little fuss. To me, that author is a power blogger.

What I frankly find irritating—and certainly not my worth my time—are blogs that are basically what I’ll call “link farms”: posting links or excerpts from other blogs with no valuable information added. I’m quite the cynic, so when I stumble upon such a blog, I figure the blogger is merely trying to generate Google hits and ad revenue, is lazy, or both. Quantity—particularly when said quantity is composed of rehashed material from other bloggers—does not a power blogger make.

When it comes to contributing to this blog, I try to write posts that have a least one nugget of helpful information, analysis, or humor, and I think that’s true of the posts from my fellow coworkers. (At the risk of sounding like I’m bragging about my coworkers, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read one of their posts and thought, “That’s smart!” or “That’s cool!”) Frankly, I’d rather not write anything at all than to publish something just because it’s been a few days since I posted. And I have a lot more respect for bloggers who write quality posts once in a while over those who put out lots of material that is borrowed from elsewhere.

And on that note, I’ll leave you with a short clip showing superheroes using their powers for a practical solution. (See, I’m trying to entertain you, too!)

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News Opinion

ePub + tech pub = ?

At Scriptorium earlier this week, we all watched live blogs of the iPad announcement. (What else would you expect from a bunch of techies?) One feature of the iPad that really got us talking (and thinking) is its support of the ePub open standard for ebooks.

ePub is basically a collection of XHTML files zipped up with some baggage files. Considering a lot of technical documentation groups create HTML output as a deliverable, it’s likely not a huge step further to create an ePub version of the content. There is a transform for DocBook to ePub; there is a similar effort underway for DITA. You can also save InDesign files to ePub.

While the paths to creating an ePub version seem pretty straightforward, does it make sense to release technical content as an ebook? I think a lot of the same reasons for releasing online content apply (less tree death, no printing costs, and interactivity, in particular), but there are other issues to consider, too: audience, how quickly ebook readers and software become widespread, how the features and benefits of the format stack up against those of PDF files and browser-based help, and so on. And there’s also the issue of actually leveraging the features of an output instead of merely doing the minimum of releasing text and images in that format. (In the PDF version of a user manual, have you ever clicked an entry in the table of contents only to discover the TOC has no links? When that happens, I assume the company that released the content was more interested in using the format to offload the printing costs on to me and less interested in using PDF as a way to make my life easier.)

The technology supporting ebooks will continue to evolve, and there likely will be a battle to see which ebook file format(s) will reign supreme. (I suspect Apple’s choice of the ePub format will raise that format’s prospects.) While the file formats get shaken out and ebooks continue to emerge as a way to disseminate content, technical communicators would be wise to determine how the format could fit into their strategies for getting information to end users.

What considerations come to your mind when evaluating the possibility of releasing your content in ePub (or other ebook) format?

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