Activity for Monica Cellio
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Which citation style do I use if I'm writing a religious book? Consider how your reader will use the book. In an academic work (which this is not), readers: - are likely to already be familiar with the cited works (they're also researchers in this field, after all) - will rely on the works you cite to evaluate your work (they care about those citations) ... (more) |
— | about 11 years ago |
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A: I have three dead-end chapters. Should I keep them or remove them? While there might be a payoff coming in the fourth chapter, if readers get frustrated enough on the way there, some of them will bail and never finish your book. So while you can ask your reviewers to forge ahead and read the rest, you can't assume readers will. Consider one of the following two... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How could collaborative writing in one world work? A supplement to this answer: All the shared-world anthologies I've read had "framing" stories written by the primary author, the one who came up with most of the setting and is driving the process. For example, Eric Flint wrote or co-wrote several of the 1632 novels, including the first one, and... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to create a functional document for in-house reference? In many ways you approach this the same way you would approach any other new project: - Review any available high-level descriptions (like functional specifications) and user stories: what is this thing and how are people meant to use it? - Identify your key contact (if you don't have one, ask ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Technical writer degree with an English BA? Why not test the hypothesis, starting with the negative test? You are unhappy in your current career. You have some background but nothing official. A BA in English might or might not be a meaningful credential (in my experience it depends on the school and the program's focus -- literature is p... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Ethics of incorporating a supplier's technical documentation into one's own documentation? I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. First, check any license terms that accompany Company S's documentation. They might have published it with the intention that other vendors will incorporate it (e.g. some Apache platforms), or they might not intend that but allow it under their lic... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Who do I cite as my source? You cite the (or a) source that you used. If you read it in Book A and that book says it came from Book B, you cite Book A because that's your source. If you choose to follow the reference and see it in Book B yourself, then you could cite either A or B (you used both). In that kind of situation,... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What's the common practice for warranty chapters in technical manuals? This is a decision you need to make in consultation with your company's legal advisors. The ability to defend against claims is affected by both what the warranty says and how prominent it is. A separate document or appendix that people are less likely to read might cause problems in this area. (... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Using a foreign language that uses a different written alphabet Rules? No, not beyond any that your publisher or editor might have. But one factor to consider is that, assuming you're not publishing in a specialized or foreign market, your readers probably won't know how to pronounce the words in a different alphabet -- you can't sound things out if you don't... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Any Good Method for Calculating Word Count Based on An Outline? Outlines vary in how much text they cover; some people might write a multi-page outline for the same content for which another would write: > Boy meets girl. > Boy loses girl. > Boy goes to mad-scientist school and builds a new girl. So the only way to know how your outlines map to word cou... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How do you effectively denote a non-"heading-ed" transition into a concluding section? This is almost never done in my experience (which is mostly with technical documentation and some journal articles), for the reason implicit in your question: it's confusing. Once you start carving off sub-sections, the expectation is that each such subsection runs until the next division or the ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: In what order should I describe a setting? I largely agree with this answer, to which I add: 1. Order of perception by your POV character fits nicely into all the other stuff that you're telling through that POV, so it's a good place to start. 2. On rare, special occasions, you can get extra impact by violating that: > The cool breeze ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Is Blogging considered a form of creative writing? I think you're being tripped up by some mistaken impressions. First, you suggest that ungrammatical and/or persuasive writing is "creative". Maybe some of it is, but that's hardly the definition of the term. There is plenty of creative writing that follows the rules and conventions of its langua... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Any advice on how to learn DITA for technical writing? I don't know how much benefit you'll get on a resume from having read about, as opposed to used, DITA, but some knowledge is better than none. DITA is both a specific framework and an approach. My documentation group is currently working through the book DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writin... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: "That's when" vs "That was when." From a strictly grammatical point Lauren's answer is right -- you're talking about something that happened in the past, so "that was" is correct. However, dialogue is often more colloquial and a first-person narrative can be more like dialogue than strict narrative. If you're trying to evoke the... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Use of realism in a fictional setting Realism has several components. Different ones dominate in different genres/settings and among individual readers. - (Real) setting accuracy: If you're describing a real place or a time in history, people who know something about that will respond based on how closely you match what they know. I... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Editing: Those darn comma splices That's not a comma splice; that's a statement followed by an elaboration.1 The second does not stand alone, so a semicolon there would be incorrect. This would be a comma splice: > It had been a thousand years since the Razzies had known the horrors of the king's might, it was a thousand years ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How do I explain a lack of sufficient data in my essay? As this answer says, it's important to state your assumptions, whatever they are. Sometimes there just isn't enough data, though, and I understand your question to be about what to do in that case. There are two basic approaches: - Only write about things you can back up. For example, Consumer ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Should embedded figures/images be placed before or after they are referred to in text? This depends in part on the type of writing (technical reference manual? novel with illustrations? etc) and how people will read it (printed book? online?). If a reader follows a reasonable path1 through the document, there should never be a point where he's looking at something incomprehensible... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What Self Publishing Company should I contact? You don't need a publishing house for that (and anyway your intended distribution is too low for such companies to be interested). You just want to self-publish your work. When I self-published a book (making, ultimately, about 300 copies), I went to a commercial duplication place that could do ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Using species from another novel, in my novel, copyright infringment? Elves and dwarves are all over fantasy fiction. Here's one compilation found by Googling "fantasy novels with elves". They are generic mythological creatures. If anything these tropes are overused; Tolkien used them well so his works are the benchmarks against which others are often measured, but... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What is the average cost of software for DITA authoring? DITA is an XML format, so any editor or IDE that supports XML will work for you. Options with good XML support range from Eclipse (free) to Oxygen and Epic (several hundred dollars per seat). Of course, anybody who's comfortable getting up close and personal with the XML can use Emacs, vim, or No... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How can I turn my short story into a novel? While it's possible to expand a short story into a novel (c.f. Ender's Game), what seems more common in my experience (citation needed) is for the short story to become one part of a larger novel. Your short story is already a self-contained unit; what else is going on around those characters, in... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Is it necessary to add a.m./p.m. after the time? If it's important enough to mention the hour then it's important enough to be clear which one you mean, but using "AM" and "PM" in fiction may not be the best way. If the scene already makes it clear which one is being talked about -- on the beach you talk about the sunlight dancing off the waves... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Tools for multiple creators/writers documentation without clouds The main challenge of having multiple writers is dealing with conflicts -- either you have to lock files to prevent concurrent edits (as Word does), or you need a way to compare and merge changes. Locking files can be pretty limiting (especially as your group grows), but source-control systems gi... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Why one sentence per paragraph in these news articles? There are two reasons. First, as described in this answer, news articles are written as an inverted pyramid and are designed to be cut at any paragraph break and still work. In the late stages of newspaper assembly, the editor making the decisions about what goes where and making it all fit is no... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Is it legal to share an index you made from someone else's book? > has anyone seen a similar situation which helps shed light on this grey area? I have in front of me two publications: Common LISP: The Language, by Guy Steele (et al.) and published by Digital Press, and Common LISP: The Index, by Rosemary Simpson and published by Coral Software Corp and Franz... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Acknowledgements in translated editions In books that go through multiple editions, you will sometimes see "preface to the first edition", "preface to the second edition", etc. In other words, there is precedent for not editing it out but instead adding to it, even if -- for all we know -- the stuff people helped with in the first edit... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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In Flare, how can we make atomic change groups in review? My team uses MadCap Flare for documentation and we have an editor on the team. When a writer is ready, we assemble a review package in Flare and send it to the editor, and she makes changes and sends it back to the writer for resolution. (The writer has the final say, and responsibility for makin... (more) |
— | almost 12 years ago |
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A: Cheapest way to self-bind a large book When I self-published a book some years ago I had the copy shop apply comb bindings for me. At the time this cost about $1/book, but it appears that Stapes and Office Depot now charge closer to $3 for this. If your print run is small, or if you are truly willing to trade time for expense, you ca... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: How to describe a scene involving a shift in the environment due to forbidden magic? I can't call specific examples to mind right now, but I've seen this sort of "wait, the world is not quite as it should be" situation handled by sharing the POV character's inner dialogue as he gradually notices peculiarities. Something like this: > "Sharon, no!" he shouted to no one in particul... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: Alternate universe vs. historicity: how to set the threshold/expectations? You first described it as "set in the late 1920s", and then later said you were "writing pseudo-historically in an alternate universe". I'm not bringing this up to nit-pick your question but, rather, to point out that these are two different things. There is historical fiction, where authors try ... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: How do I cite or give credit to a statistic on a website? The APA style recommends the following for citing anything from web sites (which would include any claim you're reporting from one): > New child vaccine gets funding boost. (2001). Retrieved March 21, 2001, from http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/story\13178.asp > > Cite in text the first few wo... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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How should I document a database schema? I am going to be writing some user-facing documentation for a database that visitors can query. That is, the people writing queries are not the ones who created the database; they can come in, look at what the database offers, and write their SQL queries. Think of something like SEDE. I could ... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: How do I approach rewriting an entire user guide in an agile environment? I've written manuals under a Scrum process, so I'll describe what worked for my team. I'm going to treat your task as if you're writing a new book. From your description, you'd be replacing the vast majority of the content anyway, so better to think of it as a new book (for which you might be ... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: Is there a standard for what should be included in an index? What goes into your index will be defined by your readers' needs. How will they use your book? Will they come in with knowledge of (and vocabulary from) a related subject? Are they experts or novices or some of each? An index's primary job is to have an answer when somebody comes to it with a que... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: Pros and cons of using real brand/company names? The main con is fear of corporate lawyers if they think you're portraying them negatively. I am not a lawyer (nor a writer or publisher of fiction), but my impression as a reader is that minor mentions don't provoke their wrath but if your plot hinges on, say, a horribly-malfunctioning vehicle, y... (more) |
— | about 12 years ago |
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A: Choosing between your Mother Tongue and another language This depends in part on who your audience is, as already noted. It also depends on what kind of editorial support you'll have and on what your goals are. I've seen lots of work, both drafts and published work, by native speakers that doesn't really measure up. English is a difficult language ful... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Best Tool to Create User Guides For internal documentation I've found wikis to be quite useful. A wiki has several useful features for this task: - built-in change-tracking - doc can be structured as several pages (e.g. one per major section) for easier management; individual pages can then be edited without any need to merge ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How do you visualize plot structure? This XKCD strip shows a visualization approach for tracking character interactions -- who's with whom when. It works pretty well even with a complex plot with many characters (one of the examples is Lord of the Rings). While I haven't tried this myself, in your shoes I would try a similar approa... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How does one avoid incomplete changes to documentation? This is a hard problem. Unless your company has the resources to do full reviews of all the documentation on each release -- and if they do, I wonder how they stay competitive -- then you are at risk here. In my experience you can do some things to address the problem when it happens, and some th... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to reference a figure from text in a technical document In the absence of a style guide saying otherwise, your approach is fine. (So is abbreviating to "Fig.", though I prefer to spend the extra three letters and use the full word. It's also consistent with "Table", which I haven't seen abbreviated as "Tab.".) Whatever you do, be consistent -- refer ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Stardate(Julian Day) - Problem As we've seen on earth, communities count time in reference to key events -- the creation of the world, the birth of a new religious figure, the beginning of a king's reign (these ones have less staying power), and so on. When calendar systems encounter each other (I say the year is 5774; you say... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: I need advice regarding the use of real-world locations in a novel This depends in part on how recognizable the landmark is to readers. On the one hand, if your scene is set in Times Square, it's hard to change anything -- enough people know the place that if you do, it'll just draw attention to your changes (which may be distracting). On the other hand, if your... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces? Start with the style guidelines from Oracle for Javadoc. While those guidelines are written for the Javadoc tool (and the Java language) in particular, the principles there apply to the corresponding tools for other languages. (I've seen this kind of documentation for C++, C#, and JavaScript APIs... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces? Programmers can write comments in code that can be automatically turned into API documentation (like Javadoc). All I have to do is add some comments explaining what a class or method does and what arguments it takes, and software turns those comments and the signatures from the code into referenc... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Writing an article avoiding Libel There is no way to absolutely prevent lawsuits; if you're going to cover controversial topics and name names, there's a risk that people will get upset and seek to take action. But there are some things you can do to "write defensively", so to speak. Following are some things I was taught in coll... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Published on blog but taken down: Still remains previously-published? Would it count as "previously published" if it appeared in your (print) newspaper, but it was three years ago and nobody is likely to still have old copies lying around? This seems like an analogous case. Your blog post, if it was at any time public, probably is still out there, in the Wayback M... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: What is the purpose of version control? If you are one of those rare people who can write, straight through, without any major refactorings or changes of direction along the way, more power to you. But for many people, and IMO any long-running project, source control is a major benefit. Here are some of the reasons: - When you realize... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Present tense in user manuals Let's break down your illustrative sentence: > Users can delete Servers This statement describes a capability -- users can perform this action. I'm hard-pressed to imagine how a different tense could be used here. Some technical writers (or style guides) make this overly passive -- "the system ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |