Content monoculture
I’m having some trouble with the idea of “extending DITA” outside the world of technical communication. DITA is obviously important in the right environment, but should we be advocating the use of DITA for more and more content?
It’s not easy being…clean
This article was originally published in STC Intercom in March of 2011.
A standards-based workflow is challenging. This article discusses the issues with DITA (an XML standard for technical communication content) and XSL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects, a standard used to create PDF from XML (http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/publishing).
The technical communicator’s survival guide for 2011
At the 2011 North Carolina Technology Association annual meeting, Gartner analyst Michael Smith discussed how IT needs to show business value or risk being marginalized within an organization.
Some thoughts on tekom
After a delightful week at the tekom/tcworld conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, I thought I’d capture a few impressions of the event.
First, it’s worth noting that tekom is really several events in one:
Anyone can write
This article was originally published in STC Intercom in September/October of 2010.
“Anyone can write.” How many times have you heard that tired cliché? And how did it ascend to a cliché? It’s pretty clear to me that most people are terrible writers. When someone says, “Anyone can write,” they actually mean, “Our writing standards are so low that anyone can meet them.”
Using Ant to find a needle in a haystack
Many content management systems (CMSs) take over the responsibility of file naming. For the most part, this is fine and is actually necessary for maintaining cross-references and conrefs within the CMS. When you use the CMS to build a DITA map, the CMS uses its own names in the <topicref> elements.
Managing technical communicators in an XML environment
To understand how XML changes technical communication, we need to step back and look at how the rise of information technology has changed the content development process. Through the 1970s, most technical communication work had separate writing, layout, and production phases. Authors wrote content, typically in longhand or on typewriters. Typesetters would then rekey the information to transfer it into the publishing system. The dedicated typesetting system would produce camera-ready copy, which was then mechanically reproduced on a printing press.
In a desktop publishing environment, authors could type information directly into a page layout program and set up the document design. This eliminated the inefficient process of re-entering information, and it often shifted the responsibility for document design to technical communicators.
Interview with a vampire: interviewing to find processes that drain efficiency
When you’re considering an overhaul of your publishing workflow, you may find yourself becoming a metaphorical version of Van Helsing, the vampire-hunting character from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and the many, many movies based on the Dracula story). You need to find all the efficiency-draining aspects of your current process and eliminate them.
The state of structure in technical communication
In early 2009, Scriptorium Publishing conducted a survey to measure how and why technical communicators are adopting structured authoring.
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.
