Save the Semicolon

Context-sensitive help is great. The reader was on a screen, needed help for that screen, and boom! There’s the appropriate help, with no need to wade through a Table of Contents or search results.

But as the help author, you now have this super-specific topic floating around your help file.

Here’s what I mean….

…usability tests, my group found that people just don’t click the Related Topics button. Which made us sad, because we’d put good content in there. Maybe I should say we had HIDDEN good content in there….

…I don’t think of a header as the warm light of home, calling people in to enjoy a hot dinner with the family. I think of them as a neon sign saying, “Authorized personnel only” …

… the writer had a checklist of items that needed to be said, then said them all, checking them off one by one. Hey, if it’s on the page, then we communicated it, right? Well, legal text has worked off that theory….

Here’s something that I’ve learned through hard experience.

Never say or imply that some feature, app, update, or anything else, is coming soon….

… when you have 3 docs due by lunch, the SME on a different coast, and an empty coffee pot, your boss doesn’t give a dangling modifier about “that” and “which.”…

Do you “sign into” the web site, or “sign in to” the web site? It’s used both ways all over the place, but in my opinion, only one way makes sense….

This 5 minute video I created isn’t HOW to use styles, but why. If you have no idea what styles can do for you, then you could be saving buckets of time with your word processor (like Word, or Pages). Buckets of Time!

…but there other ways that a writer can lose the message in the delivery, and the result can be more frustrating than missing a laugh. The key, as usual, is to remember the goal….

Imagine getting to the FIRST step in a series, and reading the steps listed below. There are a couple of small issues, and one big one. Let’s skip the small ones….