Technical writing is an often misunderstood (and too-often maligned) field. Those who believe the myths about technical writing may not see its value and therefore miss its bottom-line benefits. Let’s look at those myths and then you decide the truth about technical writing for yourself. Continue reading
It’s quite often that I’m confronted with one of the most typical questions of today: so what do you do? My reply is that I do marketing for a technical writing company. The inquirer’s response: “cool” or “what is technical writing?” and I’ve never really had a good answer. Continue reading
Why do companies fail to see the value of documentation? Simple answer: virtually no one reads it. While true, does this mean that the few people who do read it are the only ones who benefit from the information in the documentation? The answer is a resounding No. Continue reading
In most companies, documentation is simply a cost center. But did you know that documentation can save you money?
It’s a common misconception that documentation is at best a necessary evil—something that facilitates processes that would already happen. But documentation is more than just a catalyst; it can fundamentally change the way work is done, bringing improvements that cut costs.
With the tightening economy and more competition, more and more companies are relying on the RFP (request for proposal) process to find the best vendors/products. This process often involves a team effort with members of product development, finance, and marketing (to name a few of the most common groups) involved in drafting a response. We’ve worked with several companies recently helping them respond to RFPs and wanted to share our findings on the matter.
As “Intern Emily,” I may be a bit biased, but I think that everyone should be using interns. Among the plethora of reasons, here are a few I see:
Through great marketing and market saturation, Microsoft Word has become the de facto tool for documentation. This should come as no surprise since Word is the most popular word processing tool—in fact, the “most popular software in the world for personal use” as MS Office Live Director of Marketing Michael Schulz said. Naturally, when people chose a tool to create documentation, they used what they knew: Word. The question is, is it always a good choice? The answer is a resounding no.
The topic of my Management Information Systems class this morning was the use of information technology in education. My professor, a critic of the traditional education model, drew this disturbing comparison: how business is done versus how education is done. I was shocked. “But business is USING information, and education is GETTING information!” I thought.
Technical writing is all around you, but do you really know what it is? The goal of technical writing is simply to communicate information about technology that the reader can use and understand. That’s easy, right? There are three main types of technical writing used to accomplish this goal: end-user documentation, hardware and software technical documentation, and technical marketing communications.
Most of us are no strangers to credit card fraud. We avoid buying from questionable websites, make sure we have our cards with us before leaving a store, and keep our information private. But there’s more you should be doing.
At STS we service the payments industry, so we are intimately aware how credit card security works. Here are some tips we recommend to keep your cards safe.
