1. Should I User Third-Party Software In My Website?
(Web Design/Web Design Tips and Articles)

... the same declaration. I don’t know why so many web designers feel the need to try to make everything themselves. Maybe it’s the innate creativity flowing through their veins, or the fact that web ...

2. Free Alternatives to Expensive Technical Writing Software
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... RoboHelp--combined will cost close to $2000.00. But, where there's a will there's a way. There are a multitude of free--or open-souce--alternatives to those costly tools technical writers absolutely need ...

3. What is a Technical Writing Portfolio?
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... writing. The next natural question is, "Do I need one?" YES! YOU DO!!! As I've stated many times before, and as I firmly believe, technical writing, indeed all of technical communication (graphic design, ...

4. How to Gain Experience in Technical Writing
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... the needy and homeless, etc. Not only will they love to have a grant writer, they'll probably also have a lot of other business correspondence as well, so if you're not looking to do grant writing you ...

5. 5 Important Books in Technical Writing
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... M. Carroll. Carroll's first book, minimalism, introduced technical writers to the idea of only giving a reader the information they need and nothing more. He used tons of studies performed at IBM to demonstrate ...

6. Quickly Getting into Technical Writing
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... There was a time, up until about 10 years ago, when that's all one needed to get into the field. Anyone with an English degree and a fair amount of knowledge about technology could get a job as a tech ...

7. Usability Testing: Using Eye-Tracking Software
(Usability/Usability Tips, Lessons and Articles)

... or is sustained on a page. To understand what a user is fixating on, you need to understand where the user's gaze is sustained for a brief period of time. Those locations display what user's are paying ...

8. Web Design: Font and Page Size
(Web Design/Web Design Tips and Articles)

... on. We tend to skip to topics sentences throughout a page. Thus, perhaps words in san-serifs stand out more. And because we aren't reading an immense amount of text, we don't need the same strategies we ...

9. How to Write Policies and Procedures
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

A friend of mine who owns a small business asked me to write a set of policies and procedures for him. It occurred to me that he had little idea what he needed, just that he needed something. This is ...

10. Technical Communications and Programming: The Economic Reasons for Commenting
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... more important than code. ACM queue, 2. Retrieved online, June 2005 from: http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=290 Ray, G. (1989, January). Disgruntled programmers needn’t ...

11. Technical Communication and Programming: Internal and External Documentation
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... code, while external documents are needed to give context to the program itself. Internal documentation serves a basic function: it helps people more quickly and easily understand the code. This is accomplished ...

12. Why You Should Edit Your Information
(Usability/Usability Tips, Lessons and Articles)

Attention: Chickens are Being Fed Vegetarians!!! I don't think much more needs to be said about the graphic (see figure 1). Although this label is simply funny, this problem could be serious when it pertains ...

13. Persuasive Writing Example
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

I need to write a persuasive letter. The letter is intended for the corporate sponsoring organizations of our technical communication program at New Mexico Tech, and its purpose will be to convince the ...

14. When To Use Graphics
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... sometimes need anchoring to send the message you intend. What I mean can quickly be demonstrated with any work of art you can think of. For example, there is a Jackson Pollack painting called “Galaxy.” ...

15. Resume Guide Part 9
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... opportunities, let them ask you at the interview.   Following the dates of employment, we now need to mine the job ad to search for words we can use to describe what we did at this job. A lot of my students ...

16. Resume Guide Part 8
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... professors, create curriculum vitas that serve as their resumes, and these look different.   But for most of us, including me when I apply for jobs outside of the university, we need to make the good, ...

17. Resume Guide Part 6
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

Inventory of Qualifications First, you need the skeleton. To create a basic structure, you should create an inventory of qualifications from which you can pick and choose the information to include in ...

18. Resume Guide Part 5
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... you can build a general resume and cover letter, and change that to meet what’s called for by each employer. If you create the skeletons, in other words, you can change the skin as needed. For technical, ...

19. Resume Guide Part 4
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... in past jobs, or projects that you completed in past classes. But in the case of cover letters you need to go beyond simply creating a list and instead must integrate your qualifications into stories. ...

20. Resume Guide Part 3
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... same first readers (the HR people) that read the resumes. Instead, cover letters are in fact normally read by the supervisors who will be in charge of the new employee. Hence, we still need to worry about ...

21. Resume Guide Part 2
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... turn each sentence into an active voice sentence instead of the passive voice sentence. Okay, I don’t want to give a grammar lesson, but I do need to explain the difference between the two and why active ...

22. Minimum Functionality for Increased Usability
(Usability/Usability Tips, Lessons and Articles)

... drawback that the lead is buried in its body. Thus another instrument—a sharpner—is needed if the marking mechanism breaks or wears down. On the other hand, the marking mechanim of both crayon and chalk ...

23. Resume Guide Part 1
(Resume Writing/Resume Writing Lessons)

... to hire you. But how do you get to that point and past the resume requirement? And then there’s the cover letter. What’s that all about? Why do you even need one? They know why you’re sending your resume: ...

24. How to Align Text
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

Along with several other elements on a page, the alignment of your text helps achieve the goals of technical communication (making the information easy to find and easy to read/understand). You need to ...

25. Technical Communication and Programming: Using Writing Rules
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... write better documents is, after all, my occupation; and believe it or not the principles I teach to write better papers are not that different from the principles needed to write better code. Of course ...

26. Usability and Engineering Design
(Usability/Usability Tips, Lessons and Articles)

... discomfort. Safety: Reducing the risk to the user by reducing any type of hazard to the lowest possible level. User-defined Specs: does is match the requests/needs/wants as made by the user? What's missing ...

27. Usability Case Study: Apple Newton
(Usability/Usability Tips, Lessons and Articles)

... It wasn't a response to any need, only a collection of really cool concepts that weren't ready for release. Make sure that your products are driven by the right reasons: do people need or want this product, ...

28. How to Use Whitespace
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... if a reader has to look at this page in a hurry, they would find it difficult to find any specific piece of information they need within this paragraph. Understand that our eyes are naturally able to more ...

29. Goals of Technical Communication
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

Technical communication has a few goals that are important to remember before, during and after the design of information. First of all, we need to design the communication with PURPOSE. There are two ...

30. How to Use Font Type
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... calligraphy. Most would agree that it is difficult to read, and we'd never want to use it for long text in which someone needed to quickly and easily find information. Figure 6. Passage written in Bickham ...

31. What Font Size to Use
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... font on their pages if they need to. However, this isn't possible on hard copy documents. Thus, if your readers have difficulty reading smaller fonts, ensure that that you have used the appropriate size ...

32. Consistency in Writing
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... Consider your readers looking at your document. On the first page they are facing an unfamiliar set of clues telling them how to find the information they need. But by the time they get to page 20, they ...

33. The Context of Communication
(Technical Communication/Technical Communication Lessons)

... say you need to deliver a presentation that gives an update about the project you're working on. Obviously, the audience you are writing to will make a difference with regards to what you say. If you are ...