Tag: usability

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Business Captivate E-mail Language Rants Tools Uncategorized Writing

What’s Wrong with the Passive Voice?

Why do people use the passive voice? Engineers, scholars and business people alike use the passive voice on a daily basis – probably without even realizing it. So then, why is passive voice frowned upon and what exactly is it?

Simply put, passive voice is a style of writing that makes the object of the sentence the subject of the sentence. Sentences written in passive voice are structured so that the noun who performs the action is not the subject. Confused? Consider this illustration.

Sentence 1: I made a mistake (Active)
Sentence 2: Mistakes were made. (Passive)

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Business Language Marketing Training Uncategorized Water Cooler Stuff Writing

Another Technical Writing Success Story by Mark Ellingson

After an eighteen year career in technology, I have one thing in common with many of my colleagues: we have children. Eating lunch or grabbing a coffee I am frequently asked “What should my child do to get a job in technology” and “What did you major in?” and “I heard about a computer camp where kids make games. Is this a good idea?”

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Computer Languages Language Training Uncategorized

How the Audience Affects Technical Communication

Paul Clifton is a Ph.D. student in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been an on and off technical writer with Shoap Technical Services since 2007 and is currently working in interaction and user experience design at Intel.

Recently, I helped my friend update his resume. I’d helped him make a brand new one a few years before, and it had been an extremely painful process, so when he asked me to help update it, I nearly just said no. To my surprise, the draft he sent me proved that he had been paying attention when I had originally explained the rules for making a good resume, why they were the rules, and why following them mattered. His grammar and spelling still weren’t very good, but grammar and spelling are the easy part. Clearly communicating complex information by meeting the expectations of the reader is the hard part, and I was happy to see that he had pretty well taken care of that.

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Process Training Uncategorized Writing

Why Technical Writers Scroll

In a recent issue of the Shoap Technical Reader, I commented on my reaction to a usability test in which I had participated (“Why Technical Writers Are So Weird”). The test was for one of our writer’s web UI development classes. He created an application to create a response to an RFP. His observations can be found here: http://superawesomegood.com/2012/03/31/searchers-and-scrollers/.

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Business Marketing Process Tools Training

What Is Gamification?

You may have heard the term “gamification” floating around and wondered, “What is that?” The answer: Gamification is the new buzz word representing the idea of incorporating gaming concepts and techniques into non-game activities in order to drive a desired behavior. Marketing campaigns can use game mechanics to drive customers to their websites, sales agents can participate in games to drive competition and increase sales, and in our industry, documentation and training groups can build game-like training materials to fully engage the learner.

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Business E-mail Language Marketing Networking Tools Training Uncategorized Visual Aids Water Cooler Stuff Writing

MS Paint can be very useful

I used to take Microsoft Paint for granted. I saw it every once in a while in the Accessories folder when I was looking for the Calculator or Notepad but never really used it. Then I starting using screen capture programs at work to take screenshots for user guides, manuals, online helps, etc. When I was on my personal computer, I had no idea how to take a screenshot without a fancy program, and then I finally remembered Paint. Since then, I’ve used it for screenshots, creating and editing pictures/photos, and testing.

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Business Language Marketing Networking Tools Training Uncategorized Useful Links Writing

Do you know about Wikipedia’s Simple English?

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly Googling anything and everything and I frequently end up on Wikipedia’s website. One day I was looking at all of the possible languages I could read an entry in and noticed “Simple English” was one of the options. I was reading about something complex and “Simple English” simplified the topic and made it easier to understand (you could say it’s a “red carpet” to the “English” entry).

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Tools Uncategorized

It’s Time to Stop the PDF Madness

Often, the quickest way to get a document deployed is to write it in a Word doc, create a PDF, and post it somewhere for users to access. This happens a lot for both end user and developer documentation. So why, then, is distributing PDF files for online reading a top web usability gaffe?

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