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- Portfolios and skill building — 2 comments
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Sep 10 2010
Developing Company Editing Standards
This article is nothing dramatically new, but it is a good summary. Developing Company Editing Standards, by Kristine Haugseth. This presentation covers how to develop editing standards for content. It provides tips on how to get started when no conventions exist and how to improve coverage of topics when time and resources are limited. It …
Jul 23 2010
The value of editors
Paul Ford, in Real Editors Ship, says some things I’ve been trying to tell people for years. Other editors will understand what he’s talking about; many of the people who need us most won’t get it. Here’s a quote: Editors are really valuable, and, the way things are going, undervalued. These are people who are …
Jul 19 2010
Editing troubleshooting procedures
The Diagnosis-Resolution Structure in Troubleshooting Procedures, by David K. Farkas, on the WritersUA website. In this paper, I define troubleshooting procedures and briefly sketch out how they are developed. Then I analyze the genre’s underlying architectural structure of diagnosis and resolution, showing both simple and complex configurations of symptoms and solution methods. These configurations are …
Jul 18 2010
Double numeration in single-chapter documents
A reader wrote: I have a quick question for you about numbered heads in documents. In general, numbered section heads use the chapter number as the first digit – but that’s only if you have multiple chapters in a book (1.1, 2.1, 3.1…). What if you have only one chapter in a book? Do the …
Jul 17 2010
Readability Report for OpenOffice.org on Windows
I haven’t tried this extension to OpenOffice.org, because I don’t use Windows, but it sounds interesting (if not misused or abused as often happens with “readability” scores). Would like to hear from someone who has used it. The Readability Report tool scores your document for readability, cohesion and information density. These scores provide the author …
Jul 14 2010
ASCAP’s Attack on Creative Commons
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has launched a campaign to raise money from its members to hire lobbyists to protect them against”the dangers of Copyleft, which they claim groups such as Creative Commons are promoting in order to undermine Copyright. If you are unfamiliar with the licenses promoted by Creative Commons …
Jun 02 2010
Engaging readers in documentation
At the AODC 2010 conference, Sarah Maddox, who works for Atlassian, an agile development environment, spoke on engaging readers in the documentation and the concept of documentation as an emotional experience. Sarah explained the advantages to both the customers and the company of involving readers (users) and discussed some of the techniques that Atlassian has …
Jun 01 2010
AODC 2010
The 13th Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference (AODC 2010) was held in Darwin, Australia’s Northern Territory, 12-14 May. I found the conference both highly informative (all of the sessions interested me) and a lot of fun; thus it was well worth the cost. Some highlights for me included the talks on structured content and …
Apr 21 2010
Editing illustrations: Example 2
This article is part of a series of examples of editing illustrations. This example is taken from one of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) user guides, which was being updated from OOo version 2 to version 3. I show the author’s instructions to the illustrator, the figure the illustrator produced, and my analysis and edit of the …
Apr 19 2010
Effective Onscreen Editing, 2nd edition
Geoff Hart’s Effective Onscreen Editing is an essential resource for anyone who edits onscreen, regardless of the word processor in use. Geoff’s examples are from Microsoft Word, but most of his recommendations can be translated readily to OpenOffice.org or other programs. The book is available in both PDF and printed forms, each optimised for its …