I'm Back

I haven't blogged in months. As I've talked with other tech writers though, I realize that I'm not the only one who doesn't keep up with their blog.

The recommendation is that we blog on a regular basis, and that we should each define the frequency that we can work with. For some people, it's once a week; for others, it's every day. I'm going to try the "at least once a week" approach but blog more often if I can.

I went to an STC seminar in San Antonio over the weekend. There were three presentations, each about an hour long. Although I am relatively new to the tech writing field, I was able to follow most of what they talked about. It helps that I have been writing documentation for a software development company for the last five months.

I have several "take-aways" that I could write about in this blog.

One that really hit home for me was the idea that all text seen by the customer, whether in a user guide or in the newly created software, should be reviewed by the tech writer or document specialist, whichever you call it. I have been careful not to tell a software developer what a label should say - and I still should. This concept, though, is based on the idea that I should be the User's advocate. I should speak up for them if I think a screen is confusing. I think I can take that position. It's not what I want the screen to say, it's what I think the end user would want the screen to say.