So you understand your user documentation project and you’ve specced it out. Now you’re ready to write. Here’s some tips to help you on your way. This article isn’t about the actual writing itself; it’s about the things which go along with the writing. (For information on writing online help, see www.divinewrite.com/helpfulhelp.htm.)

NOTE: This is the final article in a series of three outlining the key elements of a good user documentation process. (To read the first and second articles in this series, go to http://www.divinewrite.com/docoprocess1.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/docoprocess2.htm.)

Indexing

Index keywords should be defined while the topic is being written. At this time, the subject matter is clear in the author’s mind, and they are very conversant with all of the intricate details. Indexing during the writing stage also means that your keywords are reviewed as part of the draft process. Some authoring tools don’t really facilitate this kind of approach particularly well (e.g., some don’t allow multiple author access to the files needed for indexing), but at least the keywords should be listed at the end of each draft. (Depending on the authoring tool, this may actually be easier for the reviewers, anyway.) TIP: For further information on indexing, see The Art of Indexing (1994) by Bonura.

User documentation reviews

To ensure that your user documentation is technically correct and readable, you need to get it reviewed by an intelligent selection of people. For a software project, your review list should include a subject matter expert (generally the programmer), the software architect, perhaps the project manager, and another writer. The review requirements will vary with each draft, so your reviewers and review procedures should be documented in your work pracs.

Testing your user documentation

Testing can be performed at a number of levels:

• Each writer should test their own user documentation by following it to use the product. But remember, this kind of testing isn’t very powerful, because there’s a tendency for writers to follow instructions as they think they’ve written them, not as they’ve actually written them.
• The second level is for the testing to be performed by other writers? as part of the peer review.
• The third level is for the testing department to do formal testing on the user documentation. This type of testing doesn’t often happen, but it’s good to try to get it happening.
• The fourth level is/should be conducted as part of Beta testing (see Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.452-453).

No matter what level of testing you use, it should be designed to ensure that the tasks documented are true to the product, and that any online help functions correctly. For the user documentation to pass testing, it needs to satisfy the goals you specified in the earlier stages of the project.

Localising your user documentation

Although localisation is often considered a post-writing activity, it’s best to do it as part of the writing stage. The exact timing may vary project to project, but a good rule of thumb is to get the translators working on the second drafts (but only if you’re not expecting many changes to the draft). TIP: Most translators will probably prefer to work on a sizable piece of user documentation, rather than individual topics sent to them piece-meal, so you should wait ?til you have something of a respectable size to send them – perhaps a whole subject area, as opposed to a single topic.

With localisation, you’re performing a balancing act. If you send the user documentation to the translators too soon, you’ll spend a lot of money on changes to the translations. If you send it too late, it won’t be ready in time for the release of the product.

Managing change

It’s important that you minimise the impact of changes to the product and/or development schedule. To do this, you need to develop a technique which:

1. Identifies the change
2. Estimates the impact in time and/or resources *
3. Informs the project manager

* You can use the same estimating techniques as you used earlier in the project.

Tracking writing progress

It is important to note that the writing stage is not simply about writing. If you track your progress at every step along the way, you’ll be able to see whether you will meet your milestones and deadlines, and you’ll also be able to use this project as a learning experience? to better plan the next one. (You should ensure that all project records are easily accessible for ongoing maintenance and future project reference.)

You should track the time taken to perform every step outlined in this procedure as well as each draft stage, review times, total turnaround times, etc.

Conducting regular team meetings

In order to keep all team members
informed of writing progress, you should conduct regular team meetings. These meetings should be a forum for taking a look at your tracking metrics and discussing the estimated percentage complete for the various topics currently under way. If the estimated percentage complete is lower than it should be given the time already spent, then you can act on it. These meetings allow you to identify hitches in the writing progress.

Writing progress reports

Your management also need to be kept informed of the status of the project. You should write periodic progress reports outlining:

• Where the project is at
• What you’ve done over the last month
• What you plan to do over the next month
• Any issues you’ve encountered

Manage Production

The meaning of “production” varies depending on what kind of documentation you’re working on and who the audience is. It can encompass such things as:

• Printing
• Binding
• Product build (when the help is compiled into the product)

Although the production stage generally only requires management, you still need to spend a fair bit of time on proofing and liaising with production people.

Evaluate the Project

The purpose of the evaluation stage is to consider:

• Did the project go according to plan?
• Why? / Why not?
• How individual team members contributed to the overall project.
• How the project manager performed.
• Whether the documentation achieved its goals.

Your tracking metrics will come in handy during this stage; if there were any flaws in the project progress, they should go some way towards identifying them. You might also use the sample evaluation report provided by Hackos in Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.514-518.

Is your documentation successful?

Now that you’ve written and released the documentation, you need to determine whether it has achieved your goals. The only way to accurately do this is to conduct further user research.

TIP: For details on research methods, take a look at Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish (1998), Social Marketing: New Imperative for Public Health by Manoff (1985), Designing Qualitative Research 2nd Edition by Marshall & Rossman (1995), and “Conducting Focus Groups – A Guide for First-Time Users”, in Marketing Intelligence and Planning by Tynan & Drayton (1988).

And that’s it! Remember, this process is an ?ideal’ process. Take the bits that suit you and your project, and leave the bits that don’t.

Good luck!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Essays that are plagiarized frustrate teachers

College life: attending classes, taking tests, and writing essays. The dark side to education is cheating. What’s wrong with cheating from a university’s point of view? They get paid, what do they care what students do with their educations? If they care about students getting real educations, then copying essays and cheating on tests prevents students from really getting educated. Even if they don’t really care about the students, they care about their reputation to provide educations. A cheating atmosphere where plagiarized essays are accepted by educators will cheapen their reputation.

It’s a myth that distance learning education perpetuates plagiarizing

Educators use an arsenal of online tools to help them identify students who are not writing their own essays but turning in plagiarized essays. Web sites exist that educators can use to submit essays to check them for plagiarized passages. One limitation with these sites is that they don’t always distinguish between a properly cited passage or a sentence that was passed off as original.

Argumentative Essay Topics online waiting for you

Argumentative essay topics will either make or break your grade as far as essay writing goes. Why? Because how strong a topic you pick pre-determines the content that you can use to make your point. You will find writing essays a huge part of your coursework while you work on your education. Argumentative essays demonstrate your knowledge of a topic, your ability to apply critical thinking, and your ability to organize and write effectively.

Education professionals assign plenty of essays for college credit

Here are some ways that you can find topics for your argumentative essays fast online:

? Read the news headlines. Go to any online news site and you will be bombarded with newsworthy topics in law, health, computers, etc. Pick one and get going.

? Look at professional debate websites. By this I don’t mean presidential debates, I’m talking about “debate club” debates. They usually have a number of really good topics for argumentative essays.

? Type in “argumentative essays” in a search engine. You should come up with results that can give you some ideas for your own essay.

Basically any topic that gets a reaction out of people would probably work for you. Hot topics for argumentative essays are hot because they pose ethical dilemmas to the people who are divided on where they stand. Make sure you apply critical thinking to your position so that you don’t just end up producing recycled dribble in your essay.

Contrary to popular belief, distance learning does not have a higher percentage of plagiarized essays. While the anonymity and distance makes it easier to have a culture of cheating, the statistics show otherwise. Educators speculate that the reason why students in distance learning programs write their own essay is because students who are using distance learning programs are more mature, responsible, and hard working (since most of them are adults working full time) than the wider pool of college students

Persuasive Essay Topics in 10 minutes

Coming up with persuasive essay topics that work for you can be difficult. For many students working on their education, online programs require much writing of them.

Education professionals expect well written essays

To cut down on your writing time, it’s best to follow the following plan:

1. Work out at a high level what the outline will be like. At this point, it will be more like a format than an outline since you may not have a topic yet.

2. Brainstorm topics.

3. For the top topics, work out rough outlines to see how much you either know already or can write about readily.

4. Outline your persuasive style essay.

5. Write your essay.

6. Read it when you’re finished to make sure it’s as persuasive as it can be. You might see sections that can use stronger language to convince the reader of your stance.

To ensure your essay writing doesn’t stall out after you pick it, pick an persuasive topic that you either know a lot about or you can easily find information about it. To be persuasive, you’ll need to present a few facts upon which you’ll build your argument.

That’s why for topics that you aren’t really strong on, it makes sense to pick topics that are being covered in magazines or newspapers. Newsworthy topics are of interest to other people right now. That makes it more likely that you’ll be able to find information on that topic more easily than something that is obscurely followed.

Popularity: 12% [?]

One of the most important aspects in the business world is writing. It is the critical process of communication inside a corporation and of course in the B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) trade.

Writing memos, letters and reports is the daily task for the employers and the executives inside the company. Every firm follows some specific rules for their communication needs but they all have as a cornerstone of their standards these critical questions:

INITIAL ANALYSIS

1. What is it?
2. What is the purpose of the document?
3. When is it due?
4. How much time should you spend preparing it?
5. What key information should you cover?

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
1. Who are the readers?
2. What is their knowledge of the subject?
3. What is their opinion of the subject?
4. What actions do you want them to take?

PRESENTATION ANALYSIS
1. What format should you use?
2. What style should you follow?
3. In what order should you present the information?
4. What attachments should you include?

INITIAL ANALYSIS

What is it?

The first question asks you to identify the type of business communication you are going to write.

What is the purpose of the document?

You must identify what is the purpose you are writing for. You must be as specific as possible. For example, you can write a memo for a specific problem with a client in your corporation.

When is it due?

If you have a deadline for completing your letter or memo then the procedure is easy but if you don’t , then you must determine by yourself all the facts you need for completing your document.

How much time should you spend preparing it?

You must estimate the time you are going to spend for the preparation of your document. For example, 8 hours for contacting a business proposal letter is reasonable but spending 8 hours for a memo is not reasonable at all.

What key information should you cover?

That question defines what kind of information you should include in your memo,letter or report. For example, should a business proposal letter contain all the technical requirements for the potential prospect or not?

Who are the readers?

In this step you must identify who is the reader. Is it a co-worker or an important client?

What is their knowledge of the subject?

This is very important. Think wisely who are your readers. Do they have a decent knowledge about the subject or they don’t know anything about it.
If they have a great familiarity with the subject, then you don’t have to explain much. If they have basic familiarity then you must explain more in order to be understandable. Finally, if they don’t know anything about the subject, you must analyze it in detail and take nothing for granted.

What is their opinion of the subject?

Knowledge of a subject is not the only issue on your writing acceptance from your readers. The opinion they have about it has the same importance. Your primary task is to identify if they have a positive , negative or neutral opinion about your subject.

In most cases when the readers have positive or neutral opinion there are no serious problems for the writer. On the other hand, when your reader is negative on the subject you are dealing with, you should be extra careful with your letter or memo.

What actions do you want them to take?

If you have a clear goal for what you expect your readers to do, then your writing will be more succesful. Don’t forget to clarify the action you want your readers to do.

What format should you use?

Before you start formatting your document ask if your company has a formatting standards. Most of them have specific standards for writing letters, memos and reports. In that case you should follow them.

What style should you follow?

Style is the way you use words, abbreviations, punctuation, and other elements. If your corporation use a specific style, use it. Otherwise follow the commercial standards available. Capitalization is an element you should use systematically.
You must capitalize proper nouns and the first word of sentences.

In what order should you present the information?

The Classic standard applies here too, which is the introduction, body, and conclusion.

The introduction informs the reader what the subject is all about and provides all the necessary information the reader needs to understand.

The body emphasizes and analyzes the subject .During that process always keep in mind that your points should be stressed according to their importance. The most important should be first.

The conclusion sums up the points given in the body and directs to an action to be taken.

What attachments should you include?

The last question asks you to identify if and what kind of attachments you may need for your project. Sometimes extra information helps the readers to understand better the subject you have prepared.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Why do so many people hate to write?

Many of us have a strong fear of writing. Memories of red marks covering our papers still evoke feelings of shame, and the mysteries of grammar and spelling continue to drench us in cold sweat. Such feelings are easy to understand because they connect directly to our experience at school, to grades, and to (often unfair and erroneous) evaluations of our self-worth.

In Teaching with Writing, Toby Fulwiler presents the findings of a 1981 study of writing in American schools that I believe is still valid today. It found that the majority of assignments involved transactional writing?the kind used to communicate information.

The second most common type of writing was mechanical?the kind used to fill in the blanks, copy information off the blackboard, and take notes. In fact the study found that mechanical writing represented 24 percent of all classroom activity! Imaginative writing?the kind used, for example, in writing poetry?came in a distant third and only occurred in English classes.

It is these kinds of writing?copying down what our teachers “teach” us; regurgitating the information in boring, pedantic essays; filling in the blanks on worksheets; and taking tests?that most of us think of when asked to put our words down on paper. This is one reason why such a task so often fills us with dread and resistance.

Schools ignore the most powerful use of writing

Unfortunately, the study also found that a fourth kind of writing?expressive?was almost completely absent from the classroom. Expressive writing is the kind you do for yourself. It is when you write your own thoughts down in order to play with an idea, look at it from different angles, explore relationships, or analyze and synthesize.

In other words, the study concluded that “writing was taught almost exclusively as a means to communicate information rather than as a means to gain insight, develop ideas, or solve problems.”

Such an educational system does us a great disservice, because expressive writing is one of the most important tools we have for learning?whether or not we understand what a split infinitive is or where a colon should go! According to Fulwiler, “writing is basic to thinking about, and learning, knowledge in all fields.”

Writing has a remarkable power to foster learning

When we express our words on paper, we slow our thoughts down and separate them from our greater Self. This enables us to generate ideas we never would have thought of if we had not first written them down. It also enables us to play with ideas, move them around, and analyze them from different angles.

Writing helps us acquire new knowledge from other people and synthesize it so it becomes part of us. It helps us discover what we really think and feel about a subject, and it helps us come up with new insights that would otherwise have remained unconscious due to the fleeting nature of oral speech and inner thought.

In other words, expressive writing is one of the most powerful tools we have to foster learning.

Try these!

So how can you take advantage of this wonderful tool to achieve your own purposes? Below are a few suggestions for how you can tap into writing’s power to help you learn. I hope you have fun playing with them and seeing which ones work best for you.

I. Prewriting & Brainstorming

Before you begin a new project, enter a classroom/meeting, or begin composing a complicated written document, your mind needs preparation. Your thoughts are likely miles away from the task at hand, so it helps to find a way to reign them in and engage them.

One way to accomplish this is to prewrite. To do this, choose a subject and immediately start writing about it. Record everything that comes to your mind for a certain length of time (maybe 3 to 5 minutes) without stopping, analyzing, or judging.

Brainstorming is similar to freewriting except that you just make a list of words/phrases/ideas as quickly as possible for a certain length of time.

The brain naturally creates associations

One of our brain’s most important functions is to associate one idea with another. For example, if you think of the word mountain, your mind will immediately begin associating other ideas with it. (The first words that came to me were: snow, cool, blue, sky, pine trees, fresh, streams, ferns and shade. What about you?)

Prewriting and brainstorming are wonderful ways to use your brain’s ability to associate in order to energize your mind, connect with your task or event, and awaken your interest in it. If you are writing a docum
ent of some kind, they also generate numerous ideas that you can then select from and organize into your major thesis and supporting points.

II. Summaries & Reflections

As soon as you have listened to a speech or lecture, or read a passage in a book, write down a summary of it. If you can put something into your own words, you probably understand it and will remember it. However, if your mind feels like it is in a soupy fog when you think about what you have just read or heard, it is a sure sign that you haven’t understood the material and will soon forget it!

Writing a reflection is even more effective than simply writing a summary because when you reflect you weigh the pros and cons of what you have just learned, link what you already know and care about to the new material, and evaluate its relevancy to you.

In other words, a reflection engages both your mind and your emotions. This is important because if you are not interested in something?and cannot see how it is relevant to your life or what you are trying to accomplish?you will soon forget it.

III. Storytelling

If you have something complicated to learn, try creating a story out of it. Human beings love to tell and listen to stories, and the images created by the characters, plot and setting can remain in our minds for a lifetime.

Before the invention of writing, our ancestors used rhyme, meter and repetition; larger than life characters; and traditional plots and themes (the hero, the quest, the journey) in order to memorize their communities’ traditions and pass them down orally to new generations.

Such methods still work for us today! So whether you are trying to remember the rules of punctuation or the names of all the muscles in the body, turn them into a story replete with fun, interesting characters and a strong plot. (If you set your story to music and act it out physically, your memory will soar!)

IV. Self-Dialoging

This is another great way to find out what you truly know about a topic, to generate ideas, and to look at a subject from different angles.

When you self-dialog, you take on two roles. For example, write down a question you have, then listen for the answer from inside yourself and write that down, too! This can produce some surprising results that are quite accurate. This is because we frequently have the answers to our questions inside of ourselves–even if we aren’t conscious of it.

You might also want to take on both sides of an issue to help you understand it completely. For example, first write down several sentences in support of the issue, then write down several sentences against it.

V. Annotating

Annotation requires you to read actively by consciously thinking about what you are reading and then writing your thoughts down as you go.

When you annotate, it is as though you and the author were holding a conversation. You ask questions, connect ideas, think about what is missing, compare what the author is saying to what other authors have said, and so on.

In contrast to reading actively, many of us pick up a book and read it passively, without engaging our minds or emotions. The problem with this is that our minds often turn completely off. For example, have you ever had the experience of finishing a chapter in a book and suddenly realizing you don’t remember a word that you just read?

You can avoid this by reading actively and making notes as you go along. You might want to emulate scholars by highlighting important passages in a book and writing your comments down in the margins. Alternatively, you could write down key ideas in a notebook and then evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

Questions to consider include:

• What is the purpose and scope of the reading?
• Do you disagree with something the author said?
• Is the author biased? Did he leave something out or fail to consider something important in order to make his argument convincing?
• Does a passage remind you of something else that is similar or relevant to the topic?
• Do other authors/research corroborate this author’s thesis?

VI. The Learning Log

After a meeting or lecture, spend about five minutes summarizing and evaluating the most important points. Write down the answers to such questions as:

• What was the meeting’s purpose?
• Which ideas were most interesting or relevant to you? Why?
• What still confuses you?
• How would you summarize the major concepts?
• Did the discussion build on or relate to your prior knowledge?
• As a result of this meeting, what steps will you take next?

Experiment with these to increase your learning succes
s

In order to engage your intuitive faculties more deeply when you are experimenting with the above techniques, try listening to music. Baroque and Classical pieces by composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart work especially well for this.

If you want to energize yourself (as when you are freewriting and brainstorming), try listening to the faster (allegro) movements. If you want to calm your mind down so you can truly absorb what you are reading, try the slower (adagio and largo) movements.

You might also keep a small notebook handy so you can jot down thoughts, freewrite or brainstorm on a particular topic as it occurs to you throughout the day. Some people get their best ideas in the shower, some just as they are waking up, and others while they are commuting to work. (Mine occur when I am walking, especially if I am in the mountains or at the beach.)

Popularity: 8% [?]

Writing that lacks passion and fervor is dull and uninteresting. The writer will be short of the desire to make the work the best it can possibly be. Of course, that will show through in the writing; readers cannot be fooled.

What is this enthusiasm? It is an expression of the writer’s worst fear, greatest anger, or deepest passion. These feelings must be apparent in the writer’s work. It can be in nonfiction and fiction. A sports writer must be devoted to athletics as a participant as well as an observer. A novelist must believe in the premise of his or her story.

This passion for the idea must be deep-rooted and original. It must flow from the writer’s experience and knowledge, but that does not mean that it cannot be cultivated and nurtured. With this affinity and empathy, the writer must dedicate him or her to development of the focus by continual practice. Nor does this mean that the subject matter must be narrow and circumscribed; it means that the writer must expose his or her worst fears, anger, and passion.

Where does this passion become apparent in a writer’s work? It appears in the interests of the author?his or her beliefs, convictions, culture, and life-style. From this comes the choice of record: article, essay, short story, novel, etc. Once the form is chosen, and then it is a matter of style, syntax, grammar, etc.

This becomes a love of expression, subject matter, issue and conviction. A writer must be devoted to words, their meanings, their denotations, their connotations, and their resonance. Through words the subject matter is expressed with the biases and the partiality that is the author’s passion. Without it writing lacks conviction.

Popularity: 10% [?]