Tools & Resources

When I first started as a technical writer, a senior writer taught me how to write documentation. Her approach, which aligns with the traditional way of doing technical writing, generally followed these steps: Get involved as early as you can in the software development process. As soon as prototypes are available, or a functioning development environment, s […]

I am constantly reflecting on the answer to this question: How can I draw upon the enthusiasm, intelligence, and skill of willing volunteers all around me to take our organization’s site to the next level? This goal mostly relates to my involvement in my organization’s technology blog, which has about 80 volunteer writers. In my post about what I learned dur […]

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The following is a guest post by Steve Jong, chair of the STC Certification Commission. What does the certification program involve? First, for an introduction to the subject, I recommend the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_certification. Our Certified Professional Technical Communicator™ (CPTC) credential provides assurance to […]

The following is an interview with Ugur Akinci, a technical writer for Honeywell Corporation. Ugur asked me these same questions for an interview on this site. After answering them, I was curious about how he would answer the same questions, so I asked Ugur to respond to the questions for my site as well. (1)   How long you’ve been a technical communicator? […]