Posts filed in ‘technical terms’

Tech pubs compete

Now that the international technical publications competition has wrapped up it’s time to prepare for the next competition. The reasons to submit a competition entry are numerous but mainly it’s for authors to receive a peer-reviewed evaluation. Teams of evaluators independently complete a multipoint checklist.

Areas covered

• Content and organization—does it cover the main points, meet the purpose?
• Copy editing—is it error-free, informative and appropriate for the audience?
• Graphics—do they illustrate concepts?
• Production—does it project a professional image?
• Visual design—does it appeal, are elements integrated?

Handling flaws

Any weak areas are further evaluated. A major flaw substantially hinders the user, whereas a minor flaw might cause a momentary stumble, but doesn’t slow down the user much.

• Major flaw examples: illogical organization; incomplete or missing content; consistently unclear style; no table of contents, headers, page numbers, or index; inaccurate page numbers in table of contents or index; procedural steps buried in text; a consistent pattern of spelling and grammatical errors; confusing terminology, difficult navigation, poor visual quality.
• Minor flaw examples: a few instances of spelling and grammatical errors, misplaced graphics, inconsistent capitalization, or confusing terminology.

Award levels

1. Distinction—a work that is clearly superior in all areas. No major flaws and few, if any, minor flaws. The work applies principles of technical communication in an outstanding way, anticipates and fulfills audience needs.
2. Excellence—a work that consistently meets high standards in all areas. Clearly (if slightly imperfectly) demonstrates exceptional understanding of technical communication principles.
3. Merit—a work that consistently meets high standards in most areas. Applies technical communication principles in a highly proficient manner.

The two parts of a judging competition are the entries and the judges. Competition participation begins at your local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

Mar 16, 2009 by Pam Drucker No Comments

Saved by the rules, bothered by the exceptions

File this under know your audience. A classmate asked for help to understand an excerpt from the rules of professional conduct.

An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with potentially conflicting interests in an immigration matter, save after adequate disclosure to and with the consent of the parties, and shall not act or continue to act in a matter when there is or is likely to be a conflict of interest.

The word save can be used as a verb, noun, preposition, and conjunction. Save used as literary term is out of context when found in policies and procedures writing. Don’t do it. Constructed as such, it’s not immediately evident that an exception follows the rule.

In the context of writing policy you want to deconstruct it something like this.

Rule:  An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with…
Exception:  Only after adequate disclosure to…

February update: The U.S. “brain-dead immigration system” is more reason to come to Canada. Read the article.

Feb 06, 2009 by Pam Drucker No Comments

Housekeeping–a starter kit

There’s this little detail about housekeeping called TMI. Too much information goes something like this. Master the art of potato peeling in the following three ways.

• slicing
• dicing
• grating

And that list is fine until you append fourth and fifth ways to skin a spud. Now you, or more likely someone else, will have to update “three” to another number. The person inheriting the list becomes responsible for TMI. Good housekeeping avoids referring to a finite number.

Speaking of finite items, once there were nine, now there are eight planets. That housekeeping detail was massive, very necessary, and had to be updated everywhere immediately.

Aug 04, 2008 by Pam Drucker No Comments