Quote from http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2012/01/send_me_a_man_who_reads.html “The idea that we have undergraduates who don’t read books distresses me. Of course, I know that they do read. … They read in print and electronically. They read articles. They read blog posts. They exchange these items on Facebook and elsewhere. But reading a book, even a popular novel, requires some [...]
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Literacy
Posted in Miscellaneous, Writing, tagged learning, literacy, parenting, reading on February 16, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Why has affected been impacted?
Posted in Writing, tagged affect, impact, writing on August 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Listening to the news coverage of Hurricane Irene is giving me a headache: “Sports Events Impacted by Irene” “Business Impacted by Irene” “updates from governors and emergency managers in impacted areas” “travel impacted by Irene” “millions could be impacted by Irene” “How you can help turtles impacted by Irene” I was taught that wisdom teeth [...]
Creating an Hourly Reminder in Windows
Posted in Health, Writing, tagged desk, exercise, task on July 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Did you know that someone was actually paid to research and discover the fact that women blink twice as often as men! I don’t think any technical writers were in that study. As a technical writer, I sit at a desk all day, rarely having the occasion to move anything but my head, eyes, hands, [...]
Why does documentation "suck"?
Posted in Writing, tagged documentation on May 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
One of my tasks for slow periods at work is to troll the User Forum to read what our customers are having problems with. Each time we release a new version, there are plenty of posts to keep me busy. If I had any sort of ego, I would be severely depressed reading some of [...]
A Review of (American English) Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation, and Usage
Posted in Writing, tagged grammar on November 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Introduction American vs. British English What is Grammar? Common Errors Spell Checker Grammar Checker Usage Than vs. Then Who, Which, That different from vs. different than Mixed Construction/Parallel Sentences Sentence Structure Conjunctions Pronouns Adjectives Articles Punctuation Hyphenation Dangling Modifier Offensive Phrases New Words Compound Words References Latin Words and Phrases Introduction My degree is in [...]
Stupid Things RoboHelp Does
Posted in Writing, tagged RoboHelp on November 7, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Stupid Things RoboHelp Does Update: I updated to RoboHelp version 8. So much improved over version 7! The Search improvements alone are worth the upgrade! (12-25-2011: Version 9 was released this year (?) and I’m told it has many improvements, but I have not tried it. ——————— The meat and potatoes of a “real” technical [...]
Why You Need a Technical Writer
Posted in Writing, tagged documentation, technical writer on November 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Why do I need to hire a technical writer? My intern did a fine job on that manual last year. Sure there were a few spelling and grammar errors, but Word caught most of them. We don’t have time to create online help, but, hey, no one reads it anyway! That’s why we have a [...]
