I remember when a Russian lecturer for a university course on international communication joked that ‘Everything in Finland works but nothing can be done about anything, whereas in Russia, nothing works but you can make anything … Read More
I discussed how to research how your predecessors used DoX CMS if they left no internal documentation behind in an earlier piece. As I stated there, internal documentation on the conventions at play is essential. This … Read More
It is too often that I come across situations where the only technical writer in a company has changed and the new user was provided with zero internal documentation on how to use their copy of … Read More
Many job titles in technical communication such as ‘information architect’ reference the concept of information at some level. At the same time, our current society is defined by the data economy which is based on accumulating … Read More
Structured authoring alongside the systems that support it constitute a process with multiple steps. Despite how the details of this process can differ based on the needs of each enterprise, systems have their built-in default workflows. … Read More
When I attended the 2022 Vakki symposium, I discussed the means to increase how usable documents are with the presenters after one of the presentations there. Specifically, the topic was how to target content batter according … Read More
This series that I have decided to dub ‘Academusings’ provides a more theoretical take on subjects related to technical writing and structured authoring than my usual advice. I figured that it would be interesting to apply … Read More
This is the final installment for the foreseeable future in this series on the differences between direct text editing and structured authoring. There have been multiple references to stylesheets in prior installments. They are central to … Read More
The defining feature of structured documentation is content being divided between independently controlled modules. Such division entails that the contents must be assembled into a whole when they are being published. This article will discuss the … Read More
The effects of structured authoring covers systems other than actual content editing where it at least supports them better than direct text editing does. For example, revisioning, which involves dividing content to separately controlled revisions, is … Read More