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Tips from Topaz Cove Creations
Welcome Back!
We're a little bit late with the March issue after fighting unexpected and inexplicable computer system crashes for five weeks!
What really are the odds of having two systems go down and up and down like leapfrog, when they have mostly different software loaded on them? It's enough to make a person take a laptop computer and plug it into a palm tree on a desert island.
Most of you have seen this colorful clip art before, right? Well since it was created for the Microsoft clip art collection, computers have become a lot more portable. And we just might charter.... mmm, well, maybe not.
Contents
Monthly Tips:
Monthly lifestyle tip
Conference News
Technical Writing Tip of the Month
Can I Really Edit My Own Work?
You can if you have a thick skin, if you're honest with yourself, or if no one else has time to look at the document for you. You can also pre- or post-edit your own work if you mistrust the individual officially assigned to edit it. Not to be paranoid here, of course. If the company has an official Editor, then it is undoubtedly that Editor's job to look for accuracy, clarity, cohesion, style issues, or quirks that the company insists on using even when they're flat out wrong from the grammatical or even the commonsense standpoint. Protest and then just let it go, if that's the case. There's no help for corporate leaders who don't care if their customers think the business is run by idiots or worse. No amount of damage control can fix that image once it's out there among the public.
If you're new to technical writing, you'll gradually learn that the field has several of its own rules uniquely designed to make English professors cringe, such as short, choppy sentences and chunked information. People can only absorb what they need to know at that moment in time. Also, be aware that grammatically correct expressions can be a hindrance to clarity of communication. "Up with which we shall not put" is the classic and deliberate example from Sir Winston Churchill. However, there are times when you'll find yourself re-editing people who have changed things that shouldn't have been changed at all. An official company Editor, though overworked, generally has the last word, so will also shoulder the responsibility for any corrections not cleared with the overworked SME through the overworked writer. I've been on both sides of that fence and it can get testy indeed.
Revising your writing as you go along isn't quite the same as editing it, though it helps. I can't do justice to the fonts used, but as a formerly available STC T-shirt* stated, first you Write, then Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise, Publish! Somewhere along the way, though, an editor gets to participate in that project. If that editor is you, here are ten things to keep in mind, if you haven't done them already:
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Update the document information (File | Properties in MS Word), in case someone asks for the electronic file later on. If your company permits a Word document to be shared with the Sales Department (or more usually, the PDF version), do you really want the new customer to know you're amending another client's proposal?
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Run your software's spellchecker, then save the document again after fixing or ignoring its sometimes banal suggestions. But run it!
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Print out the document. You can't successfully edit on screen.
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Set the work aside for as long as possible, at least while you go to lunch, or suffer through a tedious meeting, or go home for the night. You'll look at the work with different eyes when you pick it up again.
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Grab a brightly colored pen but avoid red ink. Red will just raise your own hackles when you get to the end of the document. When you pick up the printout again, you are now the reader, not the writer. Does it make sense? Does it provide what the audience is looking for? Who is the audience?
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How much time do you have? Don't try to edit for everything all at once. It'll take several passes and you may not be able to check for everything.
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Is the document's definition or purpose stated or implied in the first paragraph? Do the sections that follow fulfill that promise?
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Does it meet company policy requirements? Does it hold together? Are the statements in the document accurate? Does it infringe on any other company's or author's copyright? Are trademarks properly recognized on the copyright page?
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Look for obvious flaws:
Is the alignment correct all the way through? Some work can't be formatted with justified margins, but if your user manual or news article needs to be that way, you may have to rewrite a sentence to avoid the irritation of long empty spaces between words.
Check for consistent headers and footers with updated information in them.
Are the fonts limited to one or two styles?
Did you say "two" when you meant "too"? Did you say "the the"?
Is the copyright date current? -
When in doubt, look it up! Either in an industry style guide or reference manual, Harbrace, or the Chicago Manual of Style.
*
To download the currently available specialty gifts brochure
from the Society for Technical Communication, click
here.
DISCOVERIES
A Journey Through Life
available now from www.buybooksontheweb.com
Click here to read Midwest Book Review's reaction to DISCOVERIES!
Writing Tip of the Month
Beginning the Fiction Story
There are several schools of thought on how a fictional story should be approached. Two of the most common are writing with an outline and writing without an outline! Both can be successful.
Personally, I hate using an outline for fiction. I prefer to sit down and start writing. I don't know how the story's going to end until I get there, until the characters themselves tell me what's happening. On the other hand, if the story is long and complex, characters can take me down a path I don't want to go this time around. Supporting characters are especially prone to sidetrack the writer, wanting to tell what else is going on outside of the main characters' lives. Subplots are tricky. The author must remain in charge of the story and one way to do that is to use at least a skeleton outline of what's going to happen.
When characters start to talk, I listen until I sort out whose story this is, even though that may mean many false starts and ripped up pages. It makes no difference whether I write in longhand or on the PC. Almost all stories need a beginning, a middle and an end, even when the end leaves readers to complete the story the way they want. The reader's interaction with the story helps create much magic, for everyone brings a different life history to the reading of a story. A long story, that is, a novelette or a novel, needs additional steps sketched in between the beginning and the middle, and again between the middle and the end. How are you going to get the reader from Point A to Point B to Point C, and from Point C through D, E, F, G and H?
The more a story is developed inside the author's head before it is written down, the more bare bones the outline can be. But often the story is trapped inside the pencil or pen or keyboard and needs physical organization as well as solitude and concentration to be released.
Lifestyle Tip of the Month
Why Adults Need to Say No, or Ten Ways to an Early Grave
As a typical American in any state, you are probably so enmeshed, willingly and unwillingly, in such a multitude of activities that you may as well be caught in a spider's web. Just try to make an independent move without setting off eight alarms at once.
Yet a number of unwelcome events can befall you when you have not learned to say No. To illustrate this, a mortuary once ran a public service announcement in the newspaper. It was entitled "Ten Ways to an Early Grave."
As I recall, and my memory is not perfect, these ways include:
Accept all invitations to meetings, banquets, committees, and all requests for volunteer or family projects.
Scramble up that career ladder so you get there ahead of everyone else, even if it means 10-12 hours of sitting behind a desk every day.
Extend that workday by commuting ridiculous distances.
Regard fishing, golf, bowling, tennis, as a waste of time and money.
Consider gardening and housework to be menial chores that are beneath you (unless you've damaged your back from stress, accidents or other frantic pursuits and simply cannot do them).
Fight daily to keep up with the Everhards, who are trying to keep up with the Smiths, who are trying to keep up with the Lincolns.Flaunt the possessions you have instead of maintaining a low profile.
Believe it's poor policy to take all the vacation allowed you.
Delegate some other family member to attend your children's school events.Refuse to become involved in anything that helps other people but doesn't directly benefit you financially.
Even if death does not arrive in response to your attitude toward life, other severe, often life-threatening health problems can develop from allowing yourself to take on too much, or to do too many of the wrong things. It is highly desirable to be a charitable individual who cares about your family, your neighbors, your friends, your community, your religious activities, and about humanity in general. It is so true that no man or woman is an island. As events of the past year have shown, this kind of caring brings out the very best in all of us. But it is quite another matter to be run ragged every day because you've always allowed yourself to be taken advantage of, and other people know that by now.
Create your own T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs and more at www.cafepress.com
To
purchase T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs and more, related to DISCOVERIES
A Journey Through
Life, visit www.cafeshops.com/topazcove
Writer's Conferences
For an extensive list of upcoming writer's conferences and workshops worldwide, visit the following website: http://writing.shawguides.com/ The Shaw Guides main website at www.shawguides.com has many other kinds of conferences and workshops listed. They also maintain www.TravelChums.com, which has over 12,000 members, if you're looking for traveling companions. These links should not be considered endorsements of any kind. I have never used their services, but the information is out there for your review.
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© 2002 Shirley Ann Parker. All rights reserved.
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