Shoap Technical ServicesThere is an unfortunate trend towards using more images and icons and using fewer written instructions (I like to say “words”). Personally, I don’t think it’s obvious what every icon actually is and what it means, especially when I’m in a hurry to do something.
Technical writing is all around you, but do you really know what it is? The goal of technical writing is simply to communicate information about technology that the reader can use and understand. That’s easy, right? There are three main types of technical writing used to accomplish this goal: end-user documentation, hardware and software technical documentation, and technical marketing communications.
Hello again readers! Last time we “met,” I had the pleasure of walking you through a quick primer on the Kirkpatrick model and how to best use it to assess the effectiveness of a given training program or set of training materials. My main argument was – whatever you do – make sure to focus on metrics that allow you to show measurable positive impacts that can be easily translated into $ savings. The bottom line is… well, that’s what your manager will be looking at, the bottom line. What’s the return on this documentation investment? At the end of the day, how many dollars does it put back in our pocket?
Trove ran a survey on Hacker News recently asking developers about their biggest pain points for API integration. While OAuth and backwards incompatible changes got their fair share of vitriol, I bet you can guess what the top source of frustration was.
Documentation.
Head over to the survey results, and scroll down to question 6 to see what developers hate about your API. Then ask yourself if maybe your API documentation needs a little help.
Whenever I go through a Word document with clients and they ask where a section is, I always refer them to the Document Map. Frequently, they don’t know what it is. Do you know what it is?
In short, Document Map displays the table of contents on the left side of your screen. This is helpful when searching for sections in a document even if there is a table of contents (less back and forth). You just have to make sure your text has heading styles applied to it correctly.
To find it and use it, follow the steps below.
Most of us are no strangers to credit card fraud. We avoid buying from questionable websites, make sure we have our cards with us before leaving a store, and keep our information private. But there’s more you should be doing.
At STS we service the payments industry, so we are intimately aware how credit card security works. Here are some tips we recommend to keep your cards safe.
Single-source authoring tools could be your key to cutting documentation costs and increasing efficiency.
In single-source documentation (or single-source authoring), the same pieces of information that appear in multiple documents are housed in a single location (a database) using a single-source authoring program, such as AuthorIt or Framemaker. The result is that you only have to write and maintain shared content once to produce the documentation you need.
According to an article making the rounds last week from the good ol’ beeb: Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales:
He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.
In a quest to provide marketing information to my coworkers, I started doing some research on email signature etiquette. I was very disappointed to find that almost every article on the subject is an angry tirade with little practical advice. What’s more, many of them conflict with each other. So I kept digging and came up with what I think are the keys to an appropriate email signature—presented here in calm, concise language.
You know that obnoxiously trite line “The Oxford English Dictionary defines (fill in the blank with a simple word) as…”? It just got a whole lot worse.
Recent additions to “the OED” (does everything need an acronym?) include LOL, ego-surf, and smack talk. I gave the monitor the evil eye as I scrolled down the list of newly added and updated terms. Now these words that will almost certainly fall out of style are cemented in our language (oed.com says that entries are never deleted).
What about this bothers me so much?