Today I attended a pre-conference workshop on Simplified Technical English (STE) at DocTrain West. Berry Braster, director of Tedopres, presented the benefits of writing documentation using standardized, unambiguous English, especially when materials are being translated into other languages. The implementation of STE involves developing a company-specific dictionary and using documentation software to aid in the […]

 This conference kicked off in Vancouver today and is the place to be if you’re facing content management issues in your professional life as a technical writer, or if you want to stay on the leading edge of developments in the field. Each day has a specific theme. Day 1 (today) is about content, day […]

There is nothing more sickening than a piece of writing bloated and weighed down by heavy jargon and confusing language. Call it what you will – jargoneze, legalize, bureaucrateze, or just plain gobbledygook. If you’re spreading this kind of rot, you’re a language killer and should be tried and condemned by your peers as such.

When editing technical documents, how aware should you be of regional differences in pronunciation? Here is an interesting article on the subject by Brian Forte. Forte raises the following issue regarding the usage of an indefinite article with initialisms: How do you pronounce an initialism like HTML? I was taught English in public Australian schools […]