Posts by Monica Cellio
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. ...
The Hugo awards are prominent fan awards in the SF&F genre. In 2021, I noticed that all of the finalists in the Novella category are from a single publisher, Tor.com. Novellas have, I underst...
It turns out that "Global" doesn't mean global in Flare. We haven't figured out what it actually means, but to fix this you have to select "XML Editor" from the drop-down menu shown in the screen ...
We use Madcap Flare for our documentation, and it has an annoying property: if you happen to have the shift key down when you type a space, it inserts a non-breaking space ( ). Our docume...
"Questions" seems better than "Q&A", yes. Not everything on the site will be questions. For example, a site can have a blog or a set of resources. Some sites will have sandboxes, which are p...
Your example is first-person narration in the past tense. That is, your narrator is reporting events that previously happened. At the time of the events, the narrator thought the walls were movin...
Edit: fixed. The font face and size make posts too hard to read (and also, I'm now discovering, to compose). The current font face is vertically "squashed"; this is not the Arial or similar that ...
If you are documenting programming interfaces (APIs), look for a tool that generates documentation from comments in the code. This allows you to place the documentation right with the code, and th...
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 kn...
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 "s...
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 di...
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 meani...
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 overus...
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 ad...
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...
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 ten...
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 consisten...
Each of our software releases is accompanied by a set of release notes, which include short descriptions of the following: new features, important or breaking changes to old features, and important...
Here's what we do for that. It's not cloud-based, but it is source-control-backed, like (I hope) your code already is. Tools and technologies involved: source control DocBook DTD your favorite ...
Since you're a software developer, I encourage you to think about the book the way you think about a significant application. You (probably) don't just start writing code; you do some requirements...
If your antagonist is living in the present time (but is 1000 years old), then is there any reason to believe that his speech hasn't evolved? Think about what happens to people when they move to a...
Does the publication in question have relevant style guidelines? (I'm assuming not or you wouldn't be asking here.) In your proposed solution, you are using both formatting and (initial) explicit...
One approach would be to record your story-telling sessions, particularly in a way that captures his reactions. You could then review those recordings to see what worked and what didn't (e.g. you ...
A good SDK (software development kit) includes plenty of well-documented examples. It also includes good tutorials and developer guides, which introduce concepts in logical progressions, typically ...
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 wa...
