Technical communication blog
Technical communication blogWith bits of copywriting, content design, and other stuff too
Technical communication blog
With bits of copywriting, content design, and other stuff too
Welcome to the StrayGoat Technical Communication Blog.
Here, I’ll be posting technical writing advice, opinion pieces, recommendations, and explanations on how to achieve various tasks with different software tools. (The latter of which is going to be a reminder for me as much as anyone else!).
If you find the technical writing advice posts useful, please leave a comment.
Some of the older posts have some formatting issues, due to conversion problems when I upgraded the site theme. Sadly, the comments were lost in migration too.
Technical communication blog posts
General posts about technical communication:
Voice-overs for videos when your own voice is a bit shit
What can you do when you need to create an audio commentary for a video, but your own voice isn't a good match? If you have the resources, you could hire a voice artist, but if that's not a possibility, you might want to try an automatic speech tool. In this post, I'm...
Who hires technical writers?
In the UK, technical writers are hired by organisations in many industries. Judging by the various job boards, software and engineering companies are still the main employers of tech writers. Now and again, I'm contacted by someone who is interested in becoming a...
How to get a chapter heading to wrap on the next line in MadCap Flare
Do you have mini-toc pages at the start of your chapters? Do you want to get the chapter title to appear under the chapter number, as if there was a <br /> between the chapter number and chapter title? Well, this post will tell you how to do it. Just in case...
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Paligo: How to Search for Reuse Text that is Hyphenated
Do you have hyphenated content in your Paligo topics and it just doesn’t appear in the Reuse Text search? Don’t worry, there’s a way to find it in the search. Find out how in this super-brief post by technical writer, Craig Wright.
Paligo: How to Create Subsections
Headings, Sub-headings, and Chunking If you're new to Paligo, you might be wondering how to add sub-headings to your topics. In this article, I'll show you the various ways of creating sub-headings in your output and explain the pros and cons of each. Let's start by...
Paligo: Topic or Informal Topic?
Should you create a topic or an informal topic for your content in Paligo? Freelance technical writer Craig Wright explains when to use topics and when to use informal topics. This post is aimed at authors who are new to Paligo and are looking for info on topics vs informal topics.
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Daily UX writing challenge. Day #1
As a technical writer, I know about creating user-centred content. But I've never worked as an out-and-out UX writer (although I have written microcopy for software as part of my tech writing work). I'd like to explore the world of UX writing, so I decided to do the...
Accordion Menu in MadCap Flare – Part Two
This post is the second in a multi-part series of posts that explain how to add a Foundation accordion menu and drill-down menu to a skinless output in MadCap Flare. The output will use a layout that looks like this: If you missed Part 1, you can see it here: Part One...
Accordion Menu in MadCap Flare – Part One
NOTE! This solution only works for versions of Flare that are older than Flare 2017 r2. This is because Flare 2017 r2 has a different way of handling the toc and minitocs. But the good news is that Flare 2017r3 had an update that made an accordion menu...
Using Flare’s Concept Links to Create ‘See Also’ Lists
It is important that from any topic, the reader can find everything they need to know about that topic and related topics. Don’t assume they will use search features or contents to find other related topics - guide them there instead. An easy way to do this in MadCap...
DITA blog posts
Here are some posts about DITA. I rarely post about DITA, as I don’t use it, but sometimes post about how to achieve certain things.
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MS Word blog posts
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Camtasia and Snagit blog posts
Tips and reminders for using TechSmith Camtasia and Snagit.
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Non-technical communication posts
Sometimes, I post things that are nothing to do with tech comm, but people might find useful. You’ll find those posts here.
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