For those who don't know GIGO, it's an old programming term: garbage in, garbage out. It alluded to results a program got when you fed it bad data. Yesterday, I heard this term used in reference to machine translation. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to spend a few minutes of our time (yes, yours and mine) to jus...

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I apologize, William, but I really couldn't resist that pun. I've spent some time over the last week or so thinking about keys and the keyref facility in DITA 1.2. What happens when I think too much is that I wind up going down dark pathways that twist and turn until I lose myself in the rabbit hole. Occassionally th...

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What's our value proposition as individual technical communicators? What value do we provide that our customers can't get anywhere else?

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A few days back, I had a brief Twitter conversation with @kemulholland. If I remember correctly, it began because she was having difficulty getting information so she could put together some help documentation. I suggested that she try to write technical fiction (not to be confused with science fiction). Image: Simon Howden / Free...

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Along with the business and technical considerations in converting a project to DITA, you cannot overlook the human issues involved in getting buy-in from the writing team.

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Before you groan about my writing to a theme or about bragging about my grandson, let me assure you that I do have a point to make. I also want to assure you that it does have something to do with the business we're in. I've read a lot of blog articles, seen presentations, and spoken with lots of technical communicators about the skills ...

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The late Bob Sheppard, longtime public-address announcer at Yankee Stadium, would've made a good technical writer. He believed in getting it right, speaking slowly, and always being "clear, concise, and correct.”

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