Posts by Monica Cellio
This is a supplement to this answer. Readers, especially technical readers, notice small variations and especially inconsistencies. If you talk about "removing" a resource in one place and "delet...
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 r...
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? I...
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...
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 rea...
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...
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...
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 all...
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 de...
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, ...
"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...
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 ...
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 tha...
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...
Dialect used in dialogue can work well, especially when the writer is fluent. (Writers who aren't fluent in the dialect they're trying to use can make a mess of it.) Dialect is another aspect of ...
In the translation work I've seen for user-facing documentation, the translators stuck to the organization of the source but sometimes rephrased entire paragraphs, particularly if the source used i...
Release notes should describe what changed as seen by the users. That doesn't necessarily mean "all the gory technical details", though; as with other technical writing, you want to tell the user ...
I once saw someone in your situation address the problem by adding a (gendered) middle name to signatures. This could either be your real middle name if you have one, or a nickname that you're pre...
If you live in one of the 175 countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention, then your work is automatically copyrighted when you create it. Registration is not required to have copyright...
Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced site where anybody can contribute, just like this one. Wikipedia strives for verifiability and neutrality and has an active user community, but that doesn't mean that t...
Referring to history, as noted in other answers, is a good way. You don't have to depict the action to have it come up -- in conversation, when a character reads about something online, when a det...
Flash fiction gives you very little leeway. 100 words won't allow for extended plot, character development, scene-setting... really, it's enough for one scene. I've seen people pull off more in t...
The general format for a reference citation in Harvard style is: Last name, First Initial. (Year published). Title. City: Publisher, Page(s). For a web site, this guide gives the following fo...
Use transitional phrases when you need to clarify or highlight a connection. Especially in technical writing (where concise is better), don't use them just to use them. In your example, the secon...
I don't have citations, but I've seen a couple approaches to this problem: "One possible application of (this work) would be to..." -- by casting it speculatively like that, using "would be", you...
