Techniques
Event report: Infographics and beyond
On March 6, 2019, graphic designer Olga Krelin presented an excellent hour-long webinar titled “Infographics and beyond: visualizing data, processes, and abstract ideas while avoiding confusion.” Olga has many years of experience, including an Industrial Design...
Event report: Creating instructional videos
The STC Canada West Coast chapter held its first event of 2019, a sold-out workshop on creating instructional videos, at a meeting room at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library on January 19. Joel Basart, facilitator of the workshop, tapped into his years...
Event report: Structured content webinar
On September 20, 2018 Nenad Furtula presented an overview of the principles and value of structured content. Nenad, a partner and VP Sales and Marketing at Bluestream Database Software, has been working with Extensible Markup Language (XML) for over 15 years....
September 20 – Webinar event: Structured content
A current job posting for a technical writer calls for experience “using a recognized document content management system (CMS), writing/editing in XML, DITA.” Our next webinar will explore the theory and practice behind that job requirement. On Thursday, September 20,...
How to hire a technical writer
Why hire a technical writer? In any business, a technical writer can enhance your communications, both printed and online, and make sure that they reflect your best thinking and best practices. A skilled technical writer understands audience, both internal and...
Writing a news release
The tech writing world rarely intersects with the news world, but news writing is still a handy skill to have. You might find yourself in a communications role – having to write a news release or announcement for a website, for example. Traditionally, the purpose of a...
How much does a tech writer need to know?
There’s an interesting tension in technical writing between knowing and not knowing. Tom Johnson, who blogs at www.idratherbewriting.com, tackled this question in an article on learner perspective. This is my take on the question of how much tech writers need to know...
Email or e-mail? How to create a style guide
Style guides are critical to our work as writers. They tell us how to spell words (Canadian or US?), how to hyphenate (email or e-mail?), how to punctuate (serial comma: yes or no?), how to capitalize (internet or Internet?), and how to write step-by-step procedures...