Before the 2019 November on-campus meeting, the TCLoc Team took a trip to Stuttgart for the annual tcworld conference, joining our past, present, and future TCLoc students at this inspiring event.
Product documentation can potentially be confusing, incoherent, and ambiguous in many situations. Recognising language ambiguity usually takes months, if not longer.
When it comes to writing technical information, it becomes essential to have good technical writing skills. Indeed this knowledge has to get its point through in a clear and precise way. However some technical information gets more understandable than other. And some content gets more appealing than other. That is because some people have understood that technical writing demands essential skills.
Stephen Hawking once said, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Constant change, quick decisions, and regular exchange about current tasks are key elements in agile project management. In the 2017 Pulse of the Profession report from the Project Management Institute (PMI), they concluded that “(…) 71 percent of organizations report using agile approaches for their projects sometimes, often, or always”.
These days, technical communicators are generally aware that translators almost always use computer aided translation (CAT) tools to work more quickly and produce a translation with the highest degree of consistency possible – given the source text and reference material provided.
The Dynamic Information Model is a toolkit for creating an integrated style guide that describes and enforces editing rules in a DITA authoring environment.
Knowing the technical information of a product is essential when it comes to using it properly. However, getting to know and keeping in mind all that information can be an ordeal for anyone. One solution however, which primarily deals with the accessibility of technical information, is making waves: gamification marketing. By means of a reward-based system, the learner feels more involved and is more likely to assimilate information, which will inturn make your technical information more efficient.
In an almost entirely metric, decimal world, the imperial measurement system is a hurdle that technical communicators haven’t had to worry about. That is, until lately. Before 2000, imperial units in Britain used to be a feature that could not be overlooked when translating from or towards the British market. Yet, with Brexit, hopes have been rekindled into bringing back the old imperial unit system. However, Is such a prospect at all realistic?
Nowadays, your customers are looking for information that is easily accessible online in many formats. Moreover, the technical information of a product not only helps to sell it, but also to build a community around it that perceives it positively. That way, your product will gain value and improve your reputation, leading to a healthy business model.
