Save the Semicolon

Have you ever needed to replace text in a PDF, but you didn’t have the source files? What about replacing the same bit of text on 50, 100, or 150 pages of the PDF? If the text is small and simple (like a change to the copyright year, for example), then you could do worse [...]

Do you add screen shots to your tech writing? Do you always do them a certain way? Screen shots can save the day Rather than explain where to find a button, we can just show the reader exactly where the button is. Picture, thousand words, you know the score. But screen shots can also get [...]

As a tech communicator, do you suggest interface and feature changes along with words? I do. I think I get tipped off to bad design when my job is hard….

… rather than continue to aim for good, customer-facing copy, I write it out just as I’m thinking it. Then I edit.

Can FAQs be better? Can we make them more helpful?

There are three rules (or guidelines) that I’ve found make the difference between a helpful FAQ and a frustrating one….

Here’s just under 4 minutes showing how we implemented help for an iPhone app. Before rolling the video, though, here are two issues I wrestled with, but didn’t mention in the video….

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….