Help Authoring

Help Authoring

Writing for Help Tips

This is part of the Help Authoring Tips series. The difference between a good help file and an ineffective one is not really how it looks, but ultimately, what is written there. Sure, the help should look good. This increases usability and makes a positive statement towards your company's branding. But the contents of the help often determines the user's ability to successfully use the application. Following are some tips for writing right - correctly writing the help so that…

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August 21, 2012
Help Authoring / Technical Writing / Tools / Writing

Today’s Technical Writer

Today's technical writer needs to be so much more than he or she once was. When I first started on the path to becoming a technical writer 19 years ago, the tools were more basic and infinitely more limited. WinHelp was about as cutting edge as there was.  The first company to hire me, Scitex, was a huge Israeli hi-tech company that broke tasks into tiny pieces and hired people to do them. My skills included: the fundamentals…

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August 14, 2012
Help Authoring

Indexing Tips for Help

This is part of the Help Authoring Tips series. Indexing should be, in theory, one of the most important tasks you do as a technical writer. If we all agree that most people don't read a manual from cover to cover (and certainly don't read every help topic), then it follows that the index should play a critical role. The index should point a user to the most likely topic or topics that would provide the information they seek (based…

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August 13, 2012
Help Authoring / Uncategorized

The Table of Contents – Getting it Right

This is part of the Help Authoring Tips series. The problem with many help systems is that some help authors are still thinking in a linear world. A user manual is a linear offering. While we all know that readers don't start on page 1 and read to page 200, they do start on page 16 and turn to page 17 before reading pages 18 and then 19. Linear movement. If they seem to have dropped into the middle of…

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August 12, 2012