Why you should not use the ‘print’ medium for printed manuals and other printed deliverables

Elements of Style gets another rough ride.

Dark text refers to the many layers of hidden meaning in any text segment. It ranges from the implied meaning that the author intended, or that the reader infers, to much deeper, more hidden meanings.

Some nice examples in this post by Andrew Brooke.

Michael Hamilton, MadCap vice president, product management, said “From day one, Flare has been very competitive in the HAT world. There’s no reason to think we won’t do extremely well when it comes to actual hats.”

(Thanks to Graham Campbell for spotting this great news story!)

Tom Johnson and Richard Hamilton talk about issues that documentation managers commonly encounter. The tone and pace of this podcast makes it less like an interview and more like you’re just listening in on a really interesting conversation.

I’d already ordered my copy of Richard’s book before listening to this podcast and, having heard the podcast, I’m now hoping the book will arrive soon.

1. Losing the reader
2. Making the reader feel stupid
3. Failing to stick
4. Being a total bore
5. Not providing much-needed context

Amy Hoy’s witty article provides a useful boot up the backside for any of us who might have been getting a little complacent.

by Lyndsey Amott

Folks like me who aren’t STC members might not have read Tom’s article on how Writer River was born.

Ben Minson has written a good piece about grammar in Gryphon Mountain Journals.

an objective for technical communicators is to reach beyond the grammatical and achieve clarity

Everyone who writes online help should add a 6-monthly recurring reminder in Outlook (other calendaring software is available – and preferable!) to go and read this blog post!

TechSmith corporation has released an update to Jing, the free screen capture/video capture tool. I ranted in January about a code change in that release that really bugged me …

My wife’s education is in commerce and French. She strongly detests computers. On any given day, she would rather sit at Starbucks with her favorite Paulo Coelho novel, instead of burning the midnight oil in front of a computer. This was until she entered into the world of freelancing …

Here’s a really good information video made using PICOL icons:

History of the Internet – by Melih Bilgil.

“Please don’t throw away the manual that came with your newly-purchased software …”

I just love the stuff CommonCraft do. It’s a great example of how to explain stuff effectively.