A bit of a break…

Weekly posts on the Pure Prose blog will be taking a bit of a backseat for the next while.

Yours truly has had a change of position within the ceFIMS project and thus more time will be spent away from this blog.

I hope to get back in the Pure Prose saddle in the near future, but in the meantime I would heartily recommend the Techdoc Superfeed for regular blogs on technical writing and related topics.

Bye for now…

How d’you like your newsletter in the morning?

(With apologies to Dean Martin & Helen O’Connell for paraphrasing their song)

Are HTML newsletters better than their plain text equivalents?

Well, to paraphrase a typical Irish politician, “they are and they aren’t”.

It depends on content, really. For serious stuff, I’m inclined to go with plain text – simply for the fact that I don’t like to be distracted by flashing lights/colours when digesting information that matters. For lighter stuff, then impress me all you want with dancing characters and links in all the colours of the rainbow.

But what about the middle ground – is there any? Our Irish politician again: “Well, yes and no.”

Conveying information in a newsletter format can sometimes lend a casual tone to your message. But plain text implies seriousness, thereby allowing strong words to be softly spoken.

The obvious opt-out, of course, is to offer both variants to your readership. A situation where both sides win? Our Irish politician would be pleased!

Have others any thoughts on this?

Being a careful citizen journalist

Just a short post here as I’ve been at Budapest’s Future Internet Conference this week with the ceFIMS project.

A while ago, I stated proudly that we are all citizen journalists now. Being able to post our thoughts and opinions on the Internet empowers us (whether anyone notices our postings or not is another matter).

This great “empowering” has come back to bite me a little.

I’ve been looking up hotels for a family holiday and, hence, trawling reviews on tripadvisor and the like.

Conclusion: when you’re being a citizen journalist, say thank you for good service and be honest-yet-diplomatic when you feel you’ve been had. Don’t be a loud mouth screaming at passers by on the street – it’s not nice and people will assume you’re mad.

Putting jargon-filled executives in their place

Nearly a year since I started reading it, I’ve finally finished Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style“. One of the final insights offered by this pocket-size masterpiece covers “business speak”. I’ve written about this before (here too), and as you’ve probably guessed at this stage, such empty-vessel jargon is a pet peeve of mine.

Step forward then Strunk & White’s little style bible to put business speak and its proponents in their place:

“…[business speak's] portentous nouns and verbs invest ordinary events with high adventure; executives walk among toner cartridges, caparisoned like knights. We should tolerate them–every person of spirit wants to ride a white horse. The only question is whether business vocabulary is helpful to ordinary prose. … A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user’s dreams than to express a precise meaning.”

What turns on technical authors?

Courtesy of the Cherryleaf team, here are the future trends–in order of importance–that technical authors want to know about:

1. Tools & Technologies

2. Content Strategy

3. Trends (?)

4. Web 2.0 collaborative technologies

5. DITA & single sourcing

6. Value & ROI on user assistance

7. Planning & management

8. Language & writing

I find it strange that “language & writing” ranks so low. This is, after all, how writers and authors connect with their audience. “Tools & Technologies”, at #1, are really just the mechanics for connecting to the audience – is it  really the case that technical writers are more interested in new toys than actually speaking in a language that their readers can understand?

Super feed of top tech writing blogs

Shorter working week = shorter blog post on Pure Prose this week.

In fact, this blog post is little more than a link to a list of other blog posts:

http://technicalwritingworld.com/page/techdoc-superfeed

I’ve joined and tweeted about this new social network for technical writers recently. Since the project started a few weeks ago, the creators have been constantly adding more and more interesting stuff. The above link contains a list of 50 of the top technical writing blogs.

Many of these blog posts speak about industry-type issues, but there are some more general entries for the passing observer – especially, of course, those erudite observers who wish to improve their writing and communicating skills

Writing for Science & Technology

For information to be properly imparted, a writer must talk to his/her readers. Good writers speak clearly and use words that are strong enough to carry readers on their way.

Bear the following in mind so that your writing connects with your audience:

• Reader’s familiarity with the subject;
• Reader’s attitude to the subject/writer/company/publication;
• Reader’s physical and mental state while reading (consider special needs users);
• Reader’s motivation (why are they reading your text?);
• Reader’s expectations about style, organisation and layout (e.g. how do you expect your newspaper to be laid out?);
• Amount of detail given and emphasis;
• Physical appearance of the text: layout, typesize, typeface.

Armed with this knowledge of your readers, you’re now ready to pick up your pencil and impart your information.Consider the following choices open to you:

• Sentences: Long or short, simple or complex
• Vocabulary: long or short, ordinary or grandiose, familiar or unfamiliar, concrete or abstract, non-technical or technical
• Phrasing: comfortable or stiff, direct or roundabout
• Verb forms: active or passive
• Paragraphs: use or non-use
• Punctuation: careful or casual

Before resigning yourself to having to learn yet more rules/guidelines, recall John Kirkman’s statement from ‘Good Style: Writing for Science and Technology‘:

“The best writing is not a rigid enforcement of the “correct” choices in all cases, but incorporates variety, flexibility, and intelligent use of language.”

The end of “social” media as we know it

Does anyone still believe that Facebook is just about staying in contact with your “friends”? Or, for that matter, that Twitter is simply for following “celebrities”?

A recent article entitled, “Goodbye social media…welcome back mass-media” by business and culture journalist Tom Foremski claimed that Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t even be called “social media” any more.

It’s hard to disagree with this analysis. All mainstream media outlets  have now embraced (bear-hugged?) “social” networks. Similarly, and more insidiously, most advertising campaigns also include a Facebook page which punters are asked to “like”. Needless to say, privacy and responsible data-sharing do sit easily in the same sentence as Facebook.

Perhaps there is something more truly social about dedicated on-line forums such as the newly created Technical Writing World. This will hopefully be more about creating and sharing content with fellow tech communicators (Web 1.0), rather than “consuming media via shared links” (Web 2.0), as Tom Foremski put it.

We are all now citizen journalists and technical communicators

I wanted to check out what the new Government Budget meant to my take-home pay – I went to boards.ie and found a link there that had been recommended by a number of others.

If I want to see what’s happening in my former hometown of Lanzarote – I have a look at the Lanzarote Gazette’s Resident’s Corner Forum.

When I’m looking for a hotel-room online, I read the the hotel’s reviews on tripadvisor before booking.

And so on – the list is endless. The point is that each of the above examples has one thing in common – the information sought and received has been generated by fellow users, and has not been dispatched through the official line of communication. I could have looked at the Government’s Budget pamphlets (rarely user-friendly), contacted the Lanzarote Tourist Board (too time consuming) or simply believed the hotel’s own website blurb (they’d be completely honest, right?), but what drives us all to find more accessible and reliable information is the peer review element we get via on-line forums. It’s the closest equivalent to asking a friend in the non-virtual world.

Similarly, we are no longer reliant on a very small number of official and semi-official media outlets to bring us news of current affairs. News will often break on forums before the mainstream sites pick it up. An on-line forum is also less likely to carry a slant on the item than State-run outlets or those owned by tycoons with vested business interests.

In the same vein, many of us will check out users forums before buying the latest technology gadget. We want to know if others can verify whether the actual specs live up to those theoretic ones declared by the manufacturer. We also post detailed reviews on products and services to show our expertise and to help others.

We are all now citizen journalists and technical communicators.

Just like the real world, however, the comments and posts found in on-line forums must sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt. We’re all human and we all have our biases. Having said this, most forum information is simply offered by people who have no prior agenda except to help others to benefit from their (sometimes unfortunate) experiences.

The role of technical communicators in 2011

The six trends in the following webcast give an insight into the role of technical communicators in 2011.

To wit:

Trend 1 – Word™ is the new black

Very popular, fits into Agile projects, works well with Sharepoint™

Trend 2 – Age of accountability

Tech comm must contribute to metrics/effectiveness, must show ROI (more than “ooh, shiny!”)

Trend 3 – Sharepoint™ as a content manager

Already used by many companies, can tag files with metadata

Trend 4 – Schism?

Traditional tech comm (Help & books) versus modern tech comm (content strategy/management, XML)

Trend 5 – Tri-pane help is here to stay

Standard webhelp HTML output that has several frames

Trend 6 – Cloud-based tech comm

Software config. & back-ups easier, lower overheads, but hosting is an issue

Courtesy of scriptorium.com