"what makes a good writer good, and a bad writer bad?"

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  • 1. And a Bad Writer Bad?
    What Makes a Good Writer Good?
    Presented by Congree, Inc.
    June 29, 2011
    Glendale, CA

2. Outline
Meeting the Characters and Setting the Stage
Understanding the Challenges
Locking in Good Writing Habits
Avoiding Bad Habits
Conceptualizing Standards and Practices
Implementing Standards and Practices (Congree Demo)
Questions and Answers
3. The Writers:
Gary is a Good Writer he keeps to standards and practices that make his writing valuable to his employers and clear for his audience.
Bob is a Bad Writer he doesnt know what makes writing good, or just doesnt care. Bob could use some improvement.
4. The Challenge:
Gary and Bob are each assigned half of the technical writing work on an important product manual for their company. Their boss expects it to be done quickly, efficiently, and clearly.
5. The Twist:
Que?
Gary and Bob also need to take into account that the manual will be translated into Spanish by the companys localization team this means their writing has to be as amenable to translation as possible.
6. Getting Started:
Gary always follows a few basic principles before he starts writing:
He speaks to the engineers to understand the terms hell need to use.
He speaks to his marketing people to understand the audience that will be reading the manual.
He consults his corporate style guide to ensure he knows the proper phrasing and punctuation, etc.
He subordinates the uniqueness of his own writing style to ensuring consistency in the text that he (and others) is writing.
Gary chooses the proper editor for the job, given his options.
7. Getting Started (wrong):
Bob follows a similar process to Gary, but omits several key items:
Bob checks his terminology guide, but doesnt consult the terms team.
Bob understands his assignment, but doesnt understand for whom the assignment is ultimately destined.
Bob uses the editor hes familiar with, even if its not the best choice for the job.
Bob never considers that his work is going to need to be translated, and instead focuses on writing in the ways that he was trained.
8. Which Text Editor Should You Use?
?
Editors are generally a matter of personal preference, but ensure that the tool you want to use is the right one for your particular area.
9. Know Your Audience
Remember that all technical writing does not need to be technical, nor does it need to be complex.
Ask yourself:
Who is going to read this manual both drafts, and after release?
What is the goal that Im trying to get across with every section I write?
Dont treat them as if theyre like this:
If your readers are more like this:
10. Know the Style Guide:
Does your company have an official style guide, or do you use a pre-fab one? Is it modified?
Understand the rules of the style guide, but know when to bend them for the sake of clarity and consistency.
If you dont have a style guide, consult with all the other writers and editors on the project to ensure youre all coming from the same place.
Always think about tone.
Take into account outside issues, such as the need to make text amenable to translation, when developing and implementing style guides.
11. Automate Consistency to Increase Creativity
When we write in any context, we want to inject the text with our own voice and thats good!
However, too often our own unique writing style leads to inconsistencies in the tone, terminology, style, or diction of a text and thats bad!
We can remain creative and unique, yet still maintain consistency in our text by ensuring we stick to style guides, and by ensuring we automate the processes by which we structure our documents.
12. Implementation
Even if we plan properly and are completely satisfied with our setup, the biggest challenge is ensuring implementation of our rules.

  • Without an automated means to conform text to our corporate style, were exposing ourselves to human error and limiting our potential consistency.

13. Software can give us the tools we need to conform our writers to our style guides, custom or standard, and do so automatically and within the editors we choose.