Organised by the ISTC, Technical Communication UK (TCUK) is always a highlight of the conference calendar for technical communicators in Europe. This year’s event promises to be no different. Taking place over three days from September 10th to 12th in Warwickshire, UK, the 2019 programme features a great line-up of speakers on the theme 10. […]
Writing FAQs: Dos and Don’ts
In recent years, FAQs have become a controversial issue in the web design and technical writing world. FAQs originated in the 1980s on discussion boards where regular contributors compiled lists of FAQs so that they wouldn’t have to repeat information for newcomers. Since then, FAQ pages have become a standard part of most websites, without […]
Writing User Manuals: Five Top Tips
Writing user manuals is a common requirement of the technical writer’s role across many different industries. It’s also not uncommon for this task to fall to someone who is not a technical writer by trade — and in this case, writing user manuals can seem like a daunting task. We’ve drawn on our expertise in […]
Broaden Your Audience With Improved Accessibility
According to the WHO, approximately 15% of the world’s aging population lives with some form of disability. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. What can we as technical communicators do to ensure we are providing accessible help documentation and content for all our […]
Email Management for Overstretched Technical Communicators
Email is often the best way to communicate across different countries and time zones, but what happens when the time spent dealing with email overshadows the rest of your workload? Are you a technical communicator who struggles to get through your daily inbox in a timely manner? Well, you’re not alone. A 2018 survey from […]
Using DITA Creatively to Develop Training Material
When we developed our Effective Writing Skills training course, we created the course materials using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), to test its usefulness for small content production projects. DITA is an open XML standard for creating, organising, and publishing topic-based information. The content team who developed the course material acted as ‘customers’. They […]
Creating Effective Work Instructions: Kyle Shropshire’s “The Error Free Workplace”
Kyle Shropshire’s The Error Free Workplace explores the significance of well-written instructions and highlights how well-written instructions can contribute to an error free workplace. If you want to reduce workplace errors, this book explains how technical writing can help you achieve your objective. Errors and Consequences To commence, the book outlines why some work instructions […]
Innovating Technical Communication Education
A few years ago, TWi collaborated with Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and other organisations to develop the syllabus for a new postgraduate technical communication program in Information Design and Development. This post tells the story of how it came about. Innovative Design The idea grew from a conversation between Patrice Fanning, founder of TWi, […]
Punctuation for Professionals: Delivering Technical Writing Training
How do you teach grammar and punctuation to experienced technical professionals without seeming patronising? To follow that: how do you condense the skills and knowledge needed for technical communication into a single day of training? (more…)
Reflections on the European Academic Colloquium 2018
The European Academic Colloquium (EAC) is an annual event that focuses on scientific content with respect to technical communication. This year’s event took place on April 26th and 27th at the University of Limerick. The topic of EAC 2018 was “21st Century Skills for Technical Communicators”. In this post, we look at some of the […]
