Four Candles - Just What is Simplified Technical English?

On the evening of February 5th I'll be presenting the following at the Austin area STC meeting:

Four Candles - Just What is Simplified Technical English?

You may have heard of Simplified Technical English as a way of writing your Technical Publications in order to reduce translation costs, but it applying the concepts of STE can bring benefits to all your technical writing whether they are translated or not. This presentation will cover the story behind the development of STE, plus introduce its basic concepts and explain how you can start applying them and improve the quality of your technical documentation immediately.

So why is this talk titled "Four Candles" ? This may give you a clue..

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So that's why my bookcases are so full...

I earn my daily crust in the world of digital publishing. Given the opportunity I will happily talk about all the advantages and cool stuff you can do with digital content. (like post this to multiple blogs using a single editing tool.) In fact I tend to think that today we are living in the "promised world" that I've been looking forward to in my twenty plus years of being in Corporate Publishing - the technology has at last caught up to the potential. But that's possibly a subject for a whole other post.

Yet when I wear my other hat as a freelance writer it's mainly for print publications. Give me a spare half-hour and you will likely find me hanging out in a traditional bookstore. In fact just last night I was sat in the coffee shop area of my local Barnes & Noble, working away with pen and note pad on a pitch for a graphic novel, while just a few feet away on a nearby shelf sat several copies of the book containing my recent James Bond feature.

I just can't get enough of print. I still read literally hundreds of print magazines a year and average over a book a week. But why, when I spend a large proportion of my life expounding the virtues of digital publishing does ink on paper have such a hold?

Today a print copy of the latest Seybold Report landed on my desk and my eyes immediately drifted to an article entitled "Is Print Sexy?" by Laruel Brunner. In the article Brunner eloquently managed to sum up the appeal of print. Here's a few choice extracts that I think best sum up my own views.

We trust print's permanence and we rely on print to document our world truthfully and to accurately enshrine our most precious values and ideas of the world around us. We believe, rightly or not, that it provides our foundation for fact. It's how we preserve and revere our collective experience and perceptions .......print is uniquely physical. Like all media it expresses concepts, ideas and information, but it stimulates response using more subtle, tactile techniques. We have a singularly intimate and physical relationship with print, because it appeals to virtually all of our senses. The look of a magazine, the smell of a new book.. all stimulate us visually and sensually. We love the look, smell and feel of print and of course its practicality. Print is portable and robust, it's accessible and easy to use...A shelf full of books is a collection of old friends who will never disappoint us and who remind us of who we were and of worlds long gone, showing us how we have become who we are....All of life is about stimulation and response, and print is all about life.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

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Eliminating "END GAME"

With over 20 years in this industry, I have held numerous conversations about exactly what we technical communicators do for a living. In particular, one most memorable conversation was with a senior executive at an aerospace company where I led the Technical Publications department. I may be paraphrasing him, but during our discussion, his most unforgettable statement went something like this:

“I don’t understand what’s so difficult – anyone can write. All you have to do is create the content and then just publish it.”

Disregarding the condescending nature of this gentleman’s remark as well as his total misunderstanding about what my team actually did, the words that really stuck with me were:

“Just publish it!”

What exactly did that mean? It’s something I’ve thought a lot about ever since. Over the last 15 or so years, the industry has invested a lot of time, attention, and software development into a variety of initiatives, including:

· Authoring and managing content in more efficient ways

· Making content reusable

· Creating new delivery formats and media

But what about the process of taking that content and getting it ready for delivery to the end user? When you really start to think about it, the phrase “just publish it” covers a multitude of steps, as well as external pressures to tighten schedules and produce more with the same (or fewer) resources.

This is what one of Quadralay’s customers christened as “End Game,” a phrase we liked so much, we adopted it internally.

What is “END GAME”?

For the answer to that question - check out the full text of my article at TechCom Manager.

Is DITA Just A Story?

Over the last month I’ve attended a couple of conventions related to my work as a writer on pop-culture. A couple of conversations at those conventions made me realize that the worlds of commercial publishing and technical publishing may be closer than I had at first thought.

At the first convention in San Diego at the end of July I was talking to an editor about adapting my Beatles book into a graphic novel format. But what really caught my attention was that he wanted the story told in a non-linear format.

Then last week at a literary convention here in Austin there was a general discussion about the future of story telling for the NET-generation and how could hard copy books compete. Ideas around novels written in blog, wiki, or e-mail formats were banded around. Then that phrase “non-linear” popped up again.

Further conversation revealed that for most of the people in the discussion, “non-linear” meant breaking down the overall narrative into smaller chunks that could then be presented in different orders. Each chunk would be self-contained but when assembled made an different reading experience. Heck you could even reuse some chunks to build different narratives.

This, I thought, is sounding familiar. So I “switched hats” and started to explain the concept and ideas behind DITA to the literary crowd.

I will admit I’m a late convert to DITA. I’ve been around structured authoring for many years, I was even part of the group that developed one of the first topic based authoring systems and standards. When I first heard about DITA, I didn’t think it was anything new, just a new flashy label for well proven concepts.

But DITA caught the imagination of the technical publishing industry, and the rate of acceptance and adoption made me realize that there was “something” about DITA that allowed for an almost “instinctive” understanding of its concepts and application.

Then I started to play around with DITA, even write a few documents using it, and I was convinced. Sure it may not suit everyone or every project, but it is definitely a large part of the industry’s future.

Which brings me back to the conversation at the convention.

I finished my explanation of DITA and how a topic is broken down into three parts, Concept., Procedure and Reference, when one of the editors paused, thought a second, and came back with:

“So each topic is just like the traditional three act story structure – it has a beginning, a middle and an end.”

That’s the moment the cartoon light hovering above my head switched on. Perhaps the secret to DITA’s success is not only the great technical and business benefits it brings, but that it is also recognizable on an instinctive level.

Using DITA allows technical communicators to simply tell a story.

Should Tech Writers be Writers?

In a response to a post on Tom Johnson’s excellent I'd Rather Be Writing blog, reader Kim Nathans posted this

I also came across a study on learning using a 94-page manual versus using 25 flash cards. It turns out that people learned more quickly with the flash cards covering key ideas and hints, and no step-by-step instruction.

How depressing! I was hired as a “tech writer”(emphasis is mine – AJP) but it turns out that users only want a pile of screen shots! I have to rethink all of this before I tackle this next documentation project. *sigh*

I can sympathize with Kim’s point, back in the mists of time when I first joined a technical publications department after graduating college it was because I wanted a career where I could blend my engineering degree with my love of the written word. Since the age of seven I always wanted to be a writer, but my natural tendency towards the mechanical drove my education path in another direction.

In the twenty plus years since as a tech author, editor, heading publications shops, consultant and working for software vendors selling into the tech pubs market I’ve always heard the same story – heck I even heard it this week. “Why don’t people respect technical publications?”

Maybe part of the problem is that the vast majority of us are Writers. We love the written word. Maybe we love it a little too much?

We need to ask ourselves is the written word the best thing for Technical Publications?

Perhaps the reason we don’t get the respect we feel we deserve is that what we produce on the whole is not doing its job as well as it should?

On the wall of my home office is a certificate I was issued with by the Technical Publications industry organization, the STC, many years ago. I’ve been a member of the ISTC and STC for most of my time in this industry, Take a look at the name of our industry group. The STC – The Society for Technical Communication – its not the STW. That last word is important. We are Communicators.

The old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words" has resonance for a reason.

Two of the most successful tech doc projects I ever worked on were driven by graphics. One was a touch screen graphical navigation system for mechanics maintaining underground trains. They navigated to the area of the problem by literally touching on pictures of the area of the train with the problem. The other was a entirely pictorial breakdown procedure for a boat manufacturer, the only text was the part numbers.

If anyone has seen me run a training course, I no longer use a training manual. I use screen shots, practical demos and a white board. I draw and I talk.

Several years back I wrote a white paper on using graphics as a “universal language” in technical communication. Over the course of the next few years I was asked to present that paper over and over again, it even won a couple of awards. No other paper I have ever written on any aspect of technical documentation has drawn (no pun intended) that sort of response.

Examples of effective communication using more graphics than words are all around us. I spent several years in the aerospace industry, and what’s the most effective and widely viewed piece of documentation in that industry? The safety card placed in every seat back pocket. Next time you fly, pull it out and take a look at it. It communicates across language barriers by use of simple clear illustrations and internationally understood symbols. It’s easy to look at, and you can assimilate the messages and procedures at a glance.

Just one more example, the biggest lesson I ever learned about communicating was spending a day listening to graphics design guru Edward Tufte , if you can, go listen to him talk.

Another great resource on communicating with words and pictures is Scott McLoud’s, Understanding Comics. Yes comics – think about it man has been combining words and pictures to tell stories and pass on information for centuries.

Before any one thinks I’m anti-writer, I’m not. When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a Writer. I write books, magazine articles, blogs, websites – and yes, comic books.

I’m proud to be a writer. But I leave being a pure writer to the evenings and weekends. When I’m in the office I try to be a Communicator, and use whatever techniques that work best for my “end user.”

I still use words, but I also try to use graphics, video, animation, audio and anything else, including flash cards, that will do the job of communicating in the most effective manner.

Be It Ever So Humble..

What’s the hardest working corporate document you publish?
What document has the longest circulation and “shelf life.?
What document style has withstood literally centuries of technology changes and is as familiar today as it was 400 years ago?

Don’t know?

Look in your wallet, or on your desk. I bet you can easily lay your hand on an example.

The answer – your business card.

The business card has been around since the 17th Century. The first “trade cards” were developed in London and were used as advertising and also as maps, directing the public to merchant's stores, as there was no formal street numbering system at the time. By the 19th Century the concept had become combined with the French “carte de visite” (or visiting card) that also first appeared in the 17th Century, to produce the modern business card that we all recognize.

(More on the history of the business card can be found here.)

So why do I consider it the hardest working document you produce?

Just think of all the thinks a business card must accomplish:

• Say who you are.
• Say what your job is.
• Let people know how to contact you (and as technology increases so does the number of contact choices.)
• Give the company name (and maybe a division name)Let people know what the company does.
• Project the company’s culture and values through use of design, color and maybe even the type of card stock

All in a space just 3 ½ x 2 inches.

The business card can be a great marketing tool. And with relatively cheap production costs it’s easy to produce a set for almost every occasion.

Personally I carry around four different designs.

• One for the 4Js Group,
• one for my role at Quadralay,
• one as a freelance writer,
• and ones designed for when I do events related to specific book related events like signings and conventions.
  

Take a look at your business card, what does it say about you and your business?

In future posts I’ll examine some of the cards that I’ve accumulated over the years and take a look at what works and what doesn’t.

Defining THE CONTENT POOL

Back in the pre-dawn age of electronic publishing, when one of the greatest challenges was how to convert the literal mountains of legacy paper documentation* into electronic storage (Any type of electronic storage – standards weren’t even a twinkle in the industry’s proverbial eye at that point.), I worked on a marketing campaign for a new conversion bureau service.

For the campaign’s central messaging image we selected a photo library montage that showed a ship’s life belt floating on a sea of paper.

That image stayed with me and it’s one I've referenced over the years when doing consulting work, or preparing papers for conferences.

The idea of us living in a “sea of information” is far from being a new one. The fact that we are all drowning under the amount of information currently available is a well acknowledged problem, not only in business, but also in our personal lives as well. The challenge of navigating that sea can be overwhelming. Many people just choose to ignore it, other’s make valiant attempts to, but soon drift off course.

A few years ago it struck me that the answer was not to consider all the information as a large continuous sea, but to look at it in terms of distinct separate pools of content. A pool isn’t so daunting. A pool is something we swim in for pleasure. We can easily transfer, or even share the content between pools using a bucket.

If we replace the water in the pool with the content we generate, then the bucket becomes exchange standards. The task of using the content becomes one that can be mapped, navigated and understood.

In upcoming posts I’ll expand on some of the ideas I’ve developed for establishing strategies for swimming in The Content Pool.

[* In the late 1980s I managed a large publications shop for a major aerospace company and employed two people full time as departmental librarians just to manage the amount of paper we produced. – We also had to strengthen the floor of the building!]

Related Posts.

Welcome to THE CONTENT POOL - Dive "Write" In

Making Sense of Standards (Part 1) – The Shuttle & the Horse’s Ass

There’s a popular anecdotal tale I’ve used over the years when talking at various conferences and industry group meetings about publishing standards. It goes something like this:

What’s the connection between the space shuttle and a horse’s ass?

• Consider the large Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) tank that is strapped underneath the Space Shuttle. – Why is that diameter?
• Because the only way to get it from the manufacturing facility to NASA was by rail. – So it had to fit through the smallest tunnel on the intended route.
• What decides the width of the tunnel? – The width of the tracks.
• Why are the tracks that wide? – Because they were based on the early English railroads.
• What determined the width of the English railroads? – The first ones were built over existing cart tracks. Therefore the rails were the same width as a cart axle.
• How come everyone had carts with the same axle width? Because they had to be wide enough to accommodate – a horse.
• 
  

OK it may not be 100% technically or historically accurate (and you can find some of the arguments against it here), but as an illustrative parable it works well.

Standards and specifications can have a long term unforeseen impact not only on your business, but on those who may follow, or do business with you as either a supplier or customer.

When it comes to choosing which publishing standards you want to use, don’t just jump at what is the fashionable Standard-du-jour, but carefully consider what it may mean in the long term.

Innovation on craigslist

Over the years I’ve both drafted, and responded to, various ads and online postings looking to fill various writing positions. The usual routine with these is that when someone applies and gets through the initial selection process they are sent, or invited in to complete, some sort of test of their writing or editorial skills.

It’s a routine, well accepted, process and not one where you think there’d be room for innovative thinking.

But why not apply some of the latest techniques being advocated in the creative side of corporate publishing to the recruitment process?

A few days ago I came across the following at the bottom of a listing on my local craigslist from a company looking for an editor.

To apply, please e-mail your resume with a coverletter high-lighting your background/ skills and your current compensation (or your most resent fulltime job compensation) to and specify "Editor/media Support" in the subject of the email. Please paste your resume into the body of the email. Also, to exemplefy your editting expertize; please also designate the editting errors (ie. such as mispelled words, ect.) in this paragraph

A smart example of repurposing content. Creating one document to serve two distinct yet complimentary needs. In this case a recruitment post that is also has its own built in proficiency test.

A little bit of innovative thinking that makes the recruitment process more efficient, saves printing costs and the admin overhead of sending out and reviewing follow on tests. This one paragraph probably saved the company a few thousand dollars.