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The abbreviation “et al.” is plural for “and others,” and it is almost certainly incorrect to make it possessive. You should consider rewriting the sentence instead of making it possessive.
When referring to a paper with multiple authors by using the name of the first author and "et al.", how does one indicate possession? For example, is it correct to write, "Einstein et al.'s paper ...
It turns out that "Global" doesn't mean global in Flare. We haven't figured out what it actually means, but to fix this you have to select "XML Editor" from the drop-down menu shown in the screen ...
We use Madcap Flare for our documentation, and it has an annoying property: if you happen to have the shift key down when you type a space, it inserts a non-breaking space ( ). Our docume...
Well, your teachers were talking rot, as they often do. Though, to be fair, the aim of their teaching was probably not give your the full art of writing, but simply to introduce a little elementary...
Are there any other "times" for introducing new content into a final paragraph? Have any other famous writers substantiate this bombshell? I was flabbergasted to read this para. because mo...
I don't understand the example emboldened below. Can't you add just a superscript number in the text, then in the footnotes cite that "minor case"? Unquestionably one superscript cannot "detract fr...
Perhaps you could use a different font for his dialogue. E.g. in "Asterix and the Goths", the Goth language is set in fraktur font. This would serve as a constant reminder of his weird accent; but...
I received a response from Flare's technical support. There was a bug in Flare's git integration in some older versions (at least 2019r2; not sure how much farther back). This bug was fixed in Fl...
I would say that most of the time it does not apply. Suppose you are to document the use of one particular function. Good source code documentation instantly tells the user how to use that one fun...
The links in the banner text for the Q&A category all lead to 404s due to (I assume) outdated links. E.g. "fiction" leads to https://writing.codidact.com/questions/tagged/1/fiction instead of h...
There's no quick or complete fix, but the following things have worked for me. Plant the seeds early First, involve those new hires. When everything is new to them, you are in a better position ...
How do I encourage a community mindset ... not just viewed as "Sigma's project" You don't. This is your manager's job. Talk to them. Make some suggestions. But in the end, this is their call, ...
I wish I knew. But I can at least outline where, based on long and bitter experience, I think the challenges lie. Finding a way to surmount them I must leave to others. The first problem is one of...
I joined my current company and department a few years ago. We had some documentation for processes but most people had been around for a long time and never needed it, so it was very sparse. Sinc...
We use Madcap Flare for our documentation, and the project is checked into git. (In case this matters, this is a locally-hosted git server, not GitHub.) The project uses a .gitignore file to aver...
Monica covers the main points excellently. Beyond that, if there is one specific thing I would suggest that you do to improve and remain relevant as a technical writer, it is learning to code. Thi...
Some core skills for a technical writer are: Ability to communicate effectively in writing. Ability to understand the subject matter (what you're documenting) from the user's perspective, inclu...
As technology and industry demands evolve, what tools/skills should one focus on learning/improving as a technical writer?
Hey, I'm having trouble editing my book. I have a crime novella but I can't edit that well. Does anyone have any tips to help? Thanks! ~Rosewood
A fairly common solution I've seen to issues like this is to use different font faces for literal text and meta-notation. Often it will be a monospace "teletype" or sans-serif font for literal text...
Aside from the challenges category, it crossed my mind that it'd be nice to have a place where people can share works for feedback (or just to share). For instance, if I've put together a short sto...
Over on the Judaism site, I summarized a narrative text in a block quotation. Because the narrative is well-known, I expected many people to skip the block quotation; therefore, I did not want it t...
I just noticed that some of my old meta questions here are marked as imported on my profile page, although they clearly weren't (they were meta questions about this site; there's no reason why I wo...
That's a bug, yes. :-( Thanks for the report. As a workaround, if you choose[1] the "insert" button instead of using "enter", it inserts the link into the markdown and puts you back in the editor...
