As most of you know, yesterday, Friday, June 27, 2008, was the last day Bill Gates worked, officially, at Microsoft Corporation. From today forward, he will only assume the role of Chairman of the Board at Microsoft and will no longer officially partake in software development projects at the firm. Since the early 1970s, Bill [...]
I have been in the field of Technical Writing for about twelve (12) years now, and one of the more critical areas is called System Documentation. This is the process of writing meaningful comments in computer code that will help future programmers to understand what has already been coded. Many times, programmers understand their own [...]
The United States Constitution, established by America’s founding fathers in 1776, has a total of twenty-seven (27) amendments. The first ten (10) of these are known as the Bill of Rights. And, of the entire Bill of Rights, the very first amendment is the most important one of all. It reads as follows:
Congress [...]
The following is a short list of ideas that you can put to work to make sure you organize your files effectively. Remember, virtual work can disappear! It is not like you are carving out stone and automatically what you do today is there waiting for you tomorrow. Quite the contrary. As the world becomes [...]
In the same way a hiker overlooks a lake and distant hills and mountains in the countryside, and gets filled with a great sense of inspiration, a writer can look to the words of the acclaimed author and writer Og Mandino for inspiration. Og has been called “the bestselling author of our times” and “one [...]
As a Technical Writer, I like to call the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications my “bible and official reference” because it covers such an incredible range of topics. Many writers prefer to call Webster’s Dictionary and/or Thesaurus their “bible” however, for me, technical publications is far too dynamic for this. A technical writer [...]
In their book Built To Last, authors James Collins and Jerry Porras discuss successful habits of visionary companies, but not just any companies with a vision, but rather those companies which have indeed achieved success. The owners of several small businesses in Miami have told me, over the years, that they hold this book very [...]
As the Web becomes more and more popular, “techie” ways of thinking will become less remote and more and more mainstream. So, what can be done to ease the conversion into a world where RAM, Gigabytes, open-source, and technical terms like these become as common as “hello” and “goodbye”?
The answer is simple: learn to [...]
Between 1996 and 1999 I worked for a company called “Rene Perez and Associates” in Miami, Florida. As one of two technical writers, it was my job to write user manuals about RPA’s AS/400 based aviation software programs that dealt with aircraft maintenance and accounting (PMI and PRA, respectively). I consider RPA to be one [...]
In today’s highly technical world of information technology where everyone is communicating with text messages, e-mails and voice mails, you may wonder if people still remember how to write with a basic pen and a pad of paper. Well, I myself wondered that very thought back several years ago when I was an employee at [...]
