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Posts by Monica Cellio‭

318 posts
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Q&A Why are names in fantasy novels often "original"?

As others have said, most fantasy is set in a different environment, where the non-English-speaking inhabitants have different cultural and linguistic norms. So it's only natural to want to convey...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Going from worldbuilding to writing a short story

I agree with this answer that developing characters will help you to write stories (which don't have to be full-blown books). Another approach you can take is to write very short stories or even j...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Do you italicize fictitious television show in fiction book?

I can't cite a style guide for this, only offer both observation and logic. Sanjay isn't a real person either, but you capitalized his name like you do for real people. That felt completely natur...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Is it strange/confusing to initiate/introduce a dialogue without a dialogue tag?

The quotation marks themselves provide signal. By then tying the line of dialogue to an action in the same paragraph, it's clear that Kiyoshi is speaking. If anybody else were doing the speaking ...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Do we use an article with every item in a list of countable singular nouns?

It depends. How many of them are there? An RLC circuit is composed of a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor elements. This means that an RLC circuit has exactly one of each of these three...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Presenting documentation for a large software product

As another answer noted, landing pages are of limited utility -- you need them, but you shouldn't assume people will start there. It sounds like your modules are all inter-related, even if one cus...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How would you cite your own figure in MLA?

If the figure were in another published work, you would cite it the same way you would if it were somebody else's work. Citing yourself is done when applicable; that's not an error. You indicated...

posted 6y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Cite letter and article separately even though both are on the same webpage?

The letter is a primary source, as you already know. This is the actual artifact, the letter the young woman received from NASA. The article about the history of these events is a secondary sourc...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How much detail when writing technical documentation?

It depends on who your readers are and what they are trying to do with the information. Documentation about the same product could have very different levels/types of detail depending on whether y...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to present details about the setting in a fantasy world without telling?

The people in your story might not know anything about Earth, but your readers do. You can show lighter gravity by describing things that couldn't happen on Earth -- a person out for a jog boundin...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own?

The questions you need to answer are: What story do I want to tell? What elements do I need to have available to tell it? If you want to tell your backstory, and it stands alone, then you ha...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I decide whether to answer questions, or leave them unexplained?

You don't need to -- and shouldn't try to -- explain every detail of every bit of background you've come up with. If your writing says "I had to do lots of research to write this so I'm going to ...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A When to introduce a list of two with the word "both"

"Both" can act as emphasis when one of the two is unexpected. In this usage, the unexpected one is placed second. For example, consider the difference between: Tom and his manager thought the...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I show a long amount of time has passed?

One way to show passage of time is by referring to time-based events. Over the course of a year you can use seasons for this; if we see your characters walking through the snow, and next see them ...

posted 8y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can I Have My Own Website Separate of My Publisher?

The nice thing about websites is that there can be more than one. Publishers, being publishers, want to promote their books, which will of course include on the web, but that doesn't mean you can'...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I publish package overviews (Java) or namespace overviews (C++) using Doxygen?

We solved this by adding overview files in Markdown format into the source tree and making one small configuration change. In Doxyfile, we set GENERATE_TREEVIEW to yes. This enables the sidebar t...

posted 6y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I publish package overviews (Java) or namespace overviews (C++) using Doxygen?

We use doxygen to generate API (reference) documentation for our code. We have a small Java API and a large C++ API. The usual tool of choice for Java APIs is Javadoc, but doxygen can do both and...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Writing a story with 10 POV characters (about a reality game show)

It sounds like you're describing an ensemble cast, where there are several key characters but no single main character. While the page I linked to talks about TV/movies, the same applies to writte...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can we use MadCap Flare with semantic markup?

My team uses MadCap Flare to produce a large body of documentation (thousands of topics). The source is "Flare HTML", HTML with some Flare additions (for variables, admonitions, snippets, and so o...

2 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A What constitutes a co-author credit?

In many books you'll see an author's note at the beginning (or sometimes end) in which the author thanks various people for their help -- beta readers, members of a writing circle, editors, advisor...

posted 6y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Typographical styling of UI text in document

The style I see most often in technical writing is that UI labels, like the names of menus, are bold: From the File menu, choose Save. Click the Submit button. Variable text is usually i...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to keep documents with example full date timeless

You are concerned that a document containing a recent, past date (like from last year) will make readers think your document is out of date. One way to address that is to use dates that are obviou...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can I use a phrase from song lyrics as the title of my book?

Short phrases like that can't usually be copyrighted. The link is from the US government, but I believe it to be the same for most of the Berne Convention countries. Of course you should consult ...

posted 7y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Starting a sentence with the name of a program or command-line tool: capitalization?

Rule #1 in technical documentation is: don't mislead the reader. If the command or function name begins with a lowercase letter, capitalizing it is an error -- it's not "Cat" but "cat". The Micro...

posted 8y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to communicate two elements of different general syntactic/semantic type in the same sentence?

The problem you're having is in attaching the final clause: NAME is...that helps...by rating...and helps... . When the reader gets to the "and" he's expecting it to bind to the "by" -- NAME h...

posted 8y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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