The best technical writing provides all of the information a reader needs to perform a task. No more and no less. Simple, right? If it were, we'd all be Michelangelo.

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(Image courtesy of http://www.freeimages.co.uk/) A number of people have encouraged me to make and epub version of Practical DITA. I have resisted this request for a while because I was not pleased with the transform of PDF to the Kindle format and really didn't want to put out anything ugly. I got prodded again a few weeks ago...

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Baseball scouts talk about the "five tools" that the best players have. What are the tools that successful technical communicators need? I'm not talking about software tools, but about things that matter a lot more.

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Those of you who know me, know that I'm a very staunch proponent of DITA. In fact, a recent contract I worked that had me work in Word convinced me that separating content from presentation, as DITA does, is a very good thing. So, you may ask yourself, why am I asking this question? Yesterday, I listened to Simon Bate's webinar...

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Those who know me personally know I'm a martial artist. While I don't go out of my way to announce this fact, I don't hide it either. I've just come back from Judo camp and it was a very positive experience, even though I didn't get to participate in the way I would have liked because of some physical injuries. For those of you...

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Be a nice, helpful person. Get to know your audience, and apply what you know. It's good advice for both marketers and technical communicators.

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In a number of different discussions, I've heard the statement, "You don't plan with Agile." Nothing can be farther from the truth. If anything, Agile requires even more planning, it's just not as long-term as with traditional waterfall development. The planning is more day-to-day and deals only with the content of a specific sprint. Anything larg...

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