Activity for Monica Cellio
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: How to write a good moderator nomination post? A nomination post is basically a sales pitch, packed into 1200 characters. You need to persuade readers that you are or might be a good choice in a few hundred words (give or take). So a nomination is longer than an "elevator pitch" but shorter than a full bid. Therefore, don't think of your nominat... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Character had a different name in the past. Which name should I use in a flashback? The reader needs a connection when transitioning into the flashback. That transition can be either external or internal. By external, I mean introducing the flashback. In this case, the reader knows who's in the flashback so you can use the then-current name without any more explanation. For example... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is there a need for better software for writers? IDE-like tools exist for writers. Scrivener is a powerful general-purpose tool (also with questions here). Madcap Flare, aimed at technical writers, has good support for updating links, defining "snippets" (xinclude blocks, essentially), variables, conditionalization, advanced build options, and more... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Do publishers care if submitted work has already been copyrighted? If you live in a country that is a signatory to the Berne Convention (most countries are), then your work is copyrighted as soon as you create it, regardless of whether you go through any registration process. To a publisher, your work is already copyrighted, and if they want the copyright and not ju... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How can I effectively research for a high-fantasy setting? > Base parts of the setting on real world cultures or locations. Unless you have near-infinite time to do your worldbuilding, you're probably going to keep coming back to our world. So start there! Not in the sense of "modern-day Earth with the serial numbers filed off", but in the sense of specific... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What is a more techy Technical Writer job title that isn't cutesy or confusing? This is a challenging specialization to capture in a job title, which is why my LinkedIn tagline says "speaker to programmers". But that doesn't work as a job title at any but the edgiest startups. As suggested in this answer, some use Programming Writer. At a previous company I was documenting but ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Should one blog in a few languages? Writing a full translation will approximately double the time you spend creating each post, so as other answers have said, you'll need to consider the cost versus benefit. However, thee's another approach you could take: keep writing in your native language and provide a summary in the other language... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How should we plan for translations' space needs when designing diagrams that require text? Our documentation set includes some diagrams where text is integral and can't be handled in callouts, like flowcharts and entity relationship diagrams. Our documentation is translated, so these diagrams need to be translated too. But diagram design is informed by the amount of text we need to include... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How can we make images with (necessary) text more translatable mechanically? Our documentation set includes some diagrams, such as entity relationship diagrams and flowcharts, where text is integral and cannot reasonably be handled in callouts. Our documentation is translated into another language, so these diagrams ought to get translated too. (I don't know if they currently... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How much episode recap is necessary in a tv-focused podcast? You said in a comment that this is for an existing, old show, presumably one with a fanbase. While your listeners have presumably seen it (they're listening to your podcast about it, after all), they might not have done so recently and even hardcore fans might not always remember episode sequencing (... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? In the point-of-view culture in my story, all of the women in priestly families have two-syllable names beginning with vowels. (There are reasons for this, but they're completely tangential to my question.) I've gotten feedback from a beta reader that the character names look/sound too similar, even ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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When blogging recipes, how can I support both readers who want the narrative/journey and ones who want the printer-friendly recipe? Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results will be full of long, image-rich blog posts that, somewhere in there, have the actual recipe you were looking for. Many of these have a "printer-friendly version" link to make that easier; I can get the stuff I need in my kitchen on p... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Making science for toddlers easy to remember It's been decades since I was a kid watching cartoons on TV, and I can still sing some of the Schoolhouse Rock songs. Schoolhouse Rock, for those unfamiliar with it, was a series of short (2-3 minute) bits of educational programming interspersed among Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Bullwinkle, et al. Each... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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For HTML documentation sets, are there meaningful guidelines for topic length? We produce a large HTML documentation set with the conventional two-pane view: expandable table of contents on the left, selected topic on the right. When you select a topic, if it has subtopics -- that is, sub-pages in the table of contents -- the TOC automatically expands to show them. Because our ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Adding tags to documentation built in Flare? Our software documentation set (for a SQL analytics database platform) is large, because SQL and databases have many pieces. Often a single statement, function, or feature will be highly related to a few others, and in the past people have (manually) added "related information" sections to pages to m... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What is special in API documentation compared to general technical writing? API stands for "application programming interface". API documentation is addressed to programmers who will use that interface to accomplish some task. While all technical writing is addressed to someone who's trying to accomplish some task, and while some of those people (and tasks) are deeply techni... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Should I create a domain name using a pen name that is common with another person's domain name? Names are almost never globally unique. This is true whether the owner chooses or the owner's parents do. Author Alex Feinman even has a note on his web site (.net) saying "looking for the other one? that's .com" with a link. If you search Google or LinkedIn for a name, odds are good you'll find more... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Symbolism of 18 Journeyers I see two parts to your question: signaling that 18 is significant, and signaling why it is significant. Assuming that you'll have Jewish readers too, don't skimp on the first part -- you want to give them something to notice and figure out, too. Another answer addresses ways to show why 18 is signi... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How can I highlight changes in HTML output from Flare, based on branch diff? We use Madcap Flare for a large documentation set, with HTML output. (Flare source is a very HTML-y XML with some Flare-specific additions.) We use git for source control and new work is done on branches. This means that at the end we have a git pull request (PR) that can show a diff between the bran... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Should I use acronyms in dialogues before telling the readers what it stands for in fiction? If you don't provide a hint, then readers will know only that somebody requested a meeting and that's considered an emergency. If you want to convey something about the nature of the organization (or emergency) you need to provide more of a hint, but that doesn't necessarily mean expanding the acrony... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to include external references when writing internal documentation? The guiding principle in my experience is: put the link where the reader needs the referenced information. Examples: - "This interface is like Somebody Else's Thing (link, or make SET a link itself), and in addition..." -- put the link right there, because somebody unfamiliar with SET will need to a... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Do we need to make consistent use of archaic English in our poem/novel? Regardless of what you're writing, if you use an archaic form readers will notice, and if you use an archaic form only once and not everywhere it applies, readers will notice that too. If you're doing it for effect, you've achieved your goal. This is sometimes the case in poetry. On the other hand, i... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Including disabled characters without "inspiration porn" You avoid it by showing us a whole, three-dimensional character with attendant complexity. Doing great things is not about one thing. Your character has a mix of traits, talents, interests, inclinations, genes (if it's that kind of magic), and more, and uses all those things to deal with all obstacl... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How do we edit a novel that's written by several people? The first step is to work out some style guidelines among yourselves. Agree on what style you want the finished product to follow. Because this is a project among friends rather than, say, a corporate publication, you'll probably end up including aspects of each writer's style while moving the whole ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How large should photos on my blog be? I sometimes post photos on my blog, like when I'm blogging about food. I've been shrinking the huge pictures my phone takes down to a size that fits more reasonably in a browser window -- my browser window, so far -- because I don't want my posts to require a huge window. Recently I've noticed that t... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What is in scope for criticizing technical writing This answer covers a single work like a paper well, and what it says applies to larger works too. Correctness and clarity are the most important factors in any technical work. For larger works, such as a new section in a large documentation set, I look for some additional things: - Consistency of st... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to tag distinct options/entities without giving any an implicit priority or suggested order? Full names and arbitrary names are good solutions to the question you asked. To address the question behind the one you asked -- the implicit "superiority" in ordering -- write examples that don't start with the first unit. For example, I might describe a database with nodes A, B, and C, and then tal... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Can I write a book of my D&D game? Plagiarism would be taking exact text from the various game manuals and representing it as your own. So don't do that. But you probably weren't going to anyway, because you want to tell a story, not publish a game log. Think of your story as being inspired by your game, but retell it as a story. Whe... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Consulting experts - why should they talk to someone who isn't a published writer yet? I've got nothing on shadowing (I suspect that's a very hard sell), but for asking questions, there are two (non-exclusive) approaches that I've seen and occasionally been part of (on both sides). The first is to start with your own circle of friends. I'm not a radiologist, lawyer, chef, schoolteache... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Methods for writing a code review How you structure a code review depends on the tools you're using and the level of scrutiny that was requested. Instead of giving you an exact template, therefore, I'll address the different types of content. At the lowest level, a code review can include feedback on individual lines or sections of ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What language shall they sing in? These are songs, and we learn songs differently from spoken language. Have you ever found yourself singing along to a favorite song in a language you don't even speak, but you've listened to the recording enough to have memorized it? You were almost certainly helped by meter and perhaps rhyme, by the... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Strategies for writing software design documents This answer provides a lot of good information. I want to augment it, not compete with it. Over time, many organizations develop templates for various documents (design, functional spec, test plan, etc). Often they're derived from IEEE standards -- usually, in my experience, they're simplified from ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How soon is too soon for a redemption arc? The light is inside him; it just needs a path out. Not a big gaping doorway that opens all at once, but small tendrils. Think "many drips carve a rock", not sudden change. How do you do that? In a lot of fiction that I've read (and I suspect there's psychology behind this, but I don't know), the fir... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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How can I start in media res and provide enough back-story to hook people, all in the first chapter? My story (novella?) starts in media res, in the middle of the conflict that will set the rest of the story in motion. Currently I am "scene-cutting" between that event and some earlier events that provide context. The current sequence for the first chapter is: - main character #1 and main antagonist... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: An LGBT main character, but the book isn't about LGBT issues One way to keep it from taking over your story is to make it unexceptional. Quite literally. Kem is nonbinary. If Kem, other characters, and the narrator don't make a big deal out of that, don't either hide it or gawk at it, and just go about their lives, you'll convey the message that this is normal... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Avoiding repetition when there are two unidentified individuals You can look for other ways to identify the characters. For example: > The tall figure stood in the corner, towering over the unmoving skinny figure in the chair beside it. It moved away from the seated figure to the opposite side of the room and began palpating the wall as if looking for something.... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: I'm afraid that my setups will be overlooked Setups are most rewarding when the reader realizes after the fact that that detail was important but doesn't figure it out too early (i.e. it's not more obvious than you wanted it to be). If a reader gets to the reveal without prior hints, that comes across as deus ex machina. If a reader gets to the... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to keep darkness from piling up Have a lighter "B" plot. Yes, your main character is getting deeper and deeper into a dark place because of the struggle with the evil overlord -- and in the midst of it all she also finds herself caring for her ex's rambunctious puppy. Tell the story in a way that offsets the mood of the events. A ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Do I quote the author or artist from a comic? MLA The MLA doesn't have a definitive statement on this. In an entry about citing speech bubbles from comics they show an example that includes only the author, but the book itself doesn't credit an artist on the cover so that doesn't help. I found several academic sites that give the same MLA guidance f... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Using real words from a foreign culture feels like 'Calling a rabbit a "smeerp"' I've found that the main key to unfamiliar words -- and this applies to jargon in technical writing as much as it does to foreign or made-up words in fiction -- is density. The example in the XKCD comic is irritating because it can't get through a single sentence without three new words. The situatio... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Citing an unknown primary source? Only cite sources you've actually seen. In this case, it sounds like you have a secondary source (your link) that quotes from and does not cite a primary source. All you can say with certainty is that this secondary source says that primary source says what it does. The way you handle this in your d... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How can show that my cold hearted character is coping with grief? The heartlessness you describe is "externally facing" -- the actions he takes and the way he interacts with others. That doesn't mean there's no heart at all in there; it just means he doesn't allow it to influence his actions. You can show signs of Bob mourning in his thoughts (if the story is firs... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How can I get a technical writing job for software apps without a degree? In many (most?) companies you do not need a degree or certificate; what you need is demonstrated skill. Technical writing is not a super-common degree to begin with; many technical writers have degrees in English or computer science or other fields. I had a writer on my team once whose degree was in ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I include a short biography of the person to whom my book is dedicated? It sounds like you want to introduce your readers to one of your inspirations (since you said this person is connected to one of the characters in your book). This is sometimes done in a preface, as opposed to in the backmatter, and can help "set the stage" for the work that follows. An author's pref... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to construct a technical tutorial when the user can't verify the results after each step? In addition to grouping steps that must be done together and teaching troubleshooting, give the user a way to recover -- because sometimes the user isn't going to figure it out and is going to bail on you if there's no path forward. If your tutorial is broken up into units, provide a correct answer ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: 'for example' and 'e.g.' in a thesis "E.g." is an abbreviation for the Latin "exempli gratia", which means "for example". The abbreviation is fairly common in "advanced" writing, like theses, in my experience. However, it's an other-language abbreviation, so it's a small hurdle for some. Might your thesis have readers who are less adva... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Rewriting User Guides as Stories As noted in this answer, you do need to be mindful that for a user guide your reader's goal is information, while for a rulebook it can also be entertainment. If the entertainment gets in the way of the information, the reader who has to finish his task today and is stuck on how to do the next step i... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How can I distance myself from an article published under my name, with edits I disagree with? I was the editor of my university paper back in the day. Chris Sunami's answer is right; university newspapers are produced by amateurs, people learning the trade (who might not even be taking journalism-related coursework), and they sometimes err. In addition to following the very good advice from C... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Where do I start with C++ documentation? What you write depends on your audience. API reference documentation -- the output of tool- like Doxygen -- is usually for the users of that API. Such externally-facing documentation focuses on the contracts of the API and how its various components fit together -- how are you supposed to use this co... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it okay to write a story where the protagonist is a Terrorist? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. In other words, your main character probably doesn't see himself as a terrorist, so a first-person or close third-person story focusing on that character can present something more nuanced than "terrorist, ick". I've read stories where I know the ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |