Activity for Monica Cellio
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How do you avoid the problem of a collaborative work having separate voices? For fiction that can accommodate different POVs, dividing those up per author not only addresses this problem but can be a feature. For cases where you want a unified voice, if you can't get a tough editor like Lauren Ipsum suggested, try having the authors edit each other's sections. Or, as noted... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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How do you track dependencies for your co-authors? I and one or more co-authors, sometimes geographically distributed, are working on a set of related documents. Sometimes I will make a change in my part that affects someone else's part; this could be anything from changing a name to adding a new concept (that later parts should then use or reference... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: LaTex vs. Word vs. etc Any text-based "markup" format -- LaTeX, HTML, various XML schemas like DocBook, etc -- will serve you better than binary formats like Word, Pages, FrameMaker, etc. (I am aware that some of these tools export XML or SGML.) The reasons include: - Decoupling from editors. You can use your favorite too... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: How can I revise these sentences to be more correct while still keeping the effect? The second sentence feels grammatically incorrect because it's not a sentence; it's two fragments joined by a semicolon. That doesn't make it wrong, but that's probably why you're reacting that way. If you want to keep the fragment style, I would tweak it thus: > Or perhaps not despite -- perhaps b... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to write about things which depend on each other There are two general approaches, depending on the amount of detail you need from the "other" concept. If you don't need a lot, write about subject A, and when the first interaction with B hits add a parenthetical sentence, call-out note, or footnote (depending on your style guide) describing the ot... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: What are the challenges of converting blog content to a publishable work? Books compiling previously-published articles are not new. The usual challenges there are selecting and organizing your material and editing it for a different audience. Compiling material that is still readily available (blog posts) adds one more challenge: how do you induce people to pay for what t... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Is it acceptable for a book to not have a dominant lead character? Movies and television shows can have ensemble casts; why not books? I've seen this in SF/fantasy books where the ensemble is the members of an adventuring party, the crew of a ship, etc; often there are 3-6 core characters. The novel 1632 (and successors) has many more important characters than I'm ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How can I express this more clearly or concisely? Edited based on comments: Given the following function declaration: > f\get\vend\code(v\nut\id varchar2) return varchar2; I would write the description as follows: > This function takes a nut ID (NUT\ID) and returns the vendor's seller code (WINGNUT\SELLER\CODE) for this form. If NUT\ID is not se... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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How can I manage screen shots and other graphics for maintenance? Our 1500-page documentation set contains numerous screen shots and related graphics (schematics, flow diagrams, etc). Sometimes the user interface changes and we have to update all the affected graphics. The affected graphics are not necesarily all in one book; they can be spread across several. In s... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: What's the proper etiquette/format for updating a blog post? For inconsequential changes you can just edit it. For anything substantial ("I meant to say I disagree with..."), I've often seen an explicit notation: "Edited to add: ..." "Edit: ...", or the like. If there have been relevant comments, you can include a timestamp for the edit so people will see it w... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Does a technical writer need a technical background? I am an experienced technical writer specializing in API documentation. In my experience, in order to be successful a technical writer needs enough technical aptitude to (1) understand the users' needs and (2) probe the subject-matter experts (SMEs). If all you're going to do is parrot what the SMEs ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Breaking Into Technical Writing - Where to Start (from a programming background) There are different kinds of technical writing, differing in the "technical" part. The logical place for you to start, coming from a programming background like I did, would be with programmer-facing documentation: APIs, SDKs, and the tutorials and guides that go with them. If any of your current (p... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: What is the proper way to write a date containing two days in a row? Either of those is fine ("&" is just another way to write "and") and will be understood. Another formulation you'll sometimes see is "Aug 4-5, 2011", but this is better for things that are continuous, like a convention. I assume your presentation will be in two parts, one on Aug 4 and the other on Au... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Is it acceptable to mix how you address the reader in an instructional Wiki? It would be bad style to publish documentation that did that, but since a wiki is designed to be edited by many people who will each have their own quirks and don't usually consult house style guides, doing this on a wiki probably won't raise eyebrows. That said, you should go back and change those ... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: When I'm replying to emails, what's the best way to acknowledge that I appreciated each point of someone's email? There is no rule that you have to produce an equal volume of words in order for your correspondent to appreciate you. In fact, if you quote every sentence individually, inserting "I agree" or "good point" after each, that's going to lower people's impression of you -- it's a "me, too" reply, only wor... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: What style suggestions are common for which words are used in hyperlinks? A link to the name is generally expected to link to the person, not to an article. I generally agree with @Craig Sefton, except that I would make "claims that pigs can fly" the link and not just "pigs can fly". It's a claim (by John Q), not a fact; "pigs can fly" could link to, say, a wikipedia page... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Least possible editing effort if a text is for multiple media? Any single-sourcing scheme is going to require some up-front setup in exchange for easier generation of multiple formats later. This Wikipedia page provides a starting point for process and tools. (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Technical Writing Software As Viktor said, FrameMaker is probably the best widely-used tool for doing what you're trying to do. Another (Windows-only) tool that I'm using now is Madcap Flare, but it's pretty pricy. Other considerations: DocBook is a spec, not a tool (as Viktor said). It is XML, so you can use any XML editor ... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |