More on writing…

Some recent writing resources I’ve come across (mostly from Tweets from technical writers whom I follow — thanks one and all!):

Writing is harder than you think (http://www.dissociatedpress.net/2006/11/06/writing-is-harder-than-you-think/):

…I’m not trying to suggest that writing is rocket science, but it is more difficult than most people seem to believe. Even those who have the ability to write well rarely have the personality type required to write prolifically…

Writing user friendly content (http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/writing-user-friendly-content/):

• Gauge your audience
• Abbreviations are too technical
• Make headers and the paragraph’s first sentence descriptive
• Limit length and consider reading level
• Remember basic composition lessons

Writing clearly and simply (http://webaim.org/techniques/writing/): Another excellent list of do’s and don’ts from the WebAIM people (see also: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/everything-you-need-to-know-to-make-accessible-docs/).

On documenting free software (http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/Information-sources-for-documenting-free-software):

Once you compile the software, you have another information source. Go through the software menu by menu if it is a desktop app, or option by option if it is a command line tool. But don’t stop there — a list of functions is one of the least useful forms of documentation, especially if the documentation is for new users. Instead, start trying to build use-cases and work flows so that you can use them to organize the documentation.

The art of the list (http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/the-art-of-the-list-guy-kawasaki), specifically related to blog posts:

1. Provide four to twelve items
2. Make them parallel in structure
3. Start with a verb for maximum impact
4. Begin with boldface text
5. Write it in HTML yourself.

[Links last checked December 2009]

Charging for travel time

A question from the STC’s Consultants and Independent Contractors discussion list a while back prompted a response from me — and was the inspiration for this blog post.

The question

Here’s a question for those of you who travel for your clients: I am bidding on a contract that will require me to travel for several days at a time. The client will pay for the airfare, hotel, and meals. How do you charge for your time? Do you charge your regular hourly rate for the number of hours you work those days, or do you charge a daily rate. What is your daily rate based on (e.g., 12 hrs x hourly rate, etc.)?

My response

Typical technical writer answer: “It depends!” And mostly it depends on who has made the decision to have you in their office — you or them.

I no longer live in the city — I’m some 3-4 hours drive away (no flights). So if the *client* wants me in the city for meetings, handover days etc. they pay for my travel time. If *I* decide to go to the city, and then offer to spend time in the client’s offices while I’m there, then I usually ‘eat’ the travel time.

I have one client on the other side of the country. They have a good philosophy for contractors. They see the payment of my travel time as a ‘opportunity cost’, meaning that if I wasn’t traveling to get to them, then I could be earning money working for them or another client.

So, if they want me in their office, they pay for the airfares, accommodation, meals etc. PLUS the travel time for me to get there — that’s my 3-4 drive to my capital city + the 4 hour flight to their city. Sometimes it takes me 10-12 hours to get to them (downtime in the airport waiting for a flight mostly), but I only charge for 8 hours (normal work day that I’ve ‘lost’ while traveling for them). This is charged at my normal working rate. [BTW, my 3-day a week contract with this client finished in 2008 when they replaced me with a full-time technical writer.]

For other clients at other times, I’ve charged 50% of my hourly rate for travel time.

[Link last checked January 2010]

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Got a Kindle? a Nook? or similar?

Then take a look at this list of privacy issues that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together for the various electronic books: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/e-book-privacy

Back in the day, librarians used to be worried that ‘the government’ could check library borrowing records, and there was a lot of discussion at conferences and within the professional library associations about privacy and security issues.

People buying these devices don’t seem to care that a lot of information about them, their purchases, their reading habits etc., can be monitored by a faceless corporation and forwarded to government and legal agencies, if required. Fahrenheit 451, anyone?

[Link last checked January 2010]

Oops…

Another interesting incident notification and a good story for a ’safety moment’ for the next meeting:

(For the non-Australians, a ‘ute’ is a utility vehicle — commonly called a pick-up truck in North America.)

Computer ownership life cycle

Another great cartoon from Matthew Inman, over at The Oatmeal comics site, this time on the three phases of owning a computer — the honeymoon stage, the comfortable stage, then the dinosaur stage.

Here’s a taste:

(Click the image to go to the full cartoon, or click this link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/computer_phases.)

[Links last checked January 2010]

How long will the editing take?

A colleague asked how long it would take for me to review a Word document (edit, fix formatting and styles, troubleshoot weird Table of Contents etc.). Well, how long is that proverbial piece of string?

Here was my response:

How long is dependent on several things, particularly:

• length of the document (typically, it takes longer to QA 200 pages than 50 — as you would expect)
• technical complexity of the document (if there are lots of statistics, or content we’re not familiar with, then it takes longer than for something we’re more familiar with; likewise a document with lots of tables, figures, appendices, landscape pages etc. will take longer than one that’s mostly text in portrait orientation)
• level of QA required (formatting and sorting out styles ONLY should take less time than a full QA where we edit the content for grammar, spelling, punctuation, check citations against the references list, check terms, check against the boilerplate text in the template, check against the Editorial Guide etc.)
• author’s ability to write (some are great, some not so good; a good author requires less time from us as their writing requires less changes)
• author’s ability to follow our Editorial Guide (see comment above re author’s ability to write)
• which template the author has used, and how familiar they are with it (if we have to put the content into a new copy of the template because it’s got corrupted, add at least half to one day to each estimate).

These are guesses based on my prior experience with similar documents. [My fellow technical writer/editor and I] may be able to QA a good document (shortish, well-written, follows the Editorial Guide etc.) in one day; more typically it’s two. Some docs blow out to 3 or 4 (the worst I’ve had was 5…). And some of us appear to work faster than others because we have less interruptions etc. For example, I work from home with no meetings to attend, nobody to interrupt me, no office distractions, no fire drills etc. Therefore my “1 to 2 days” is elapsed time for me, whereas that 1 to 2 days for my associate might take her 3 to 5 days as she has so many interruptions that I don’t have. She may spend the same number of hours on a document, but they won’t necessarily be concentrated hours as she sits in an office cubicle surrounded by others and has all those other commitments.

See also:

• How long will it take? And what will it cost? http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/how-long-will-it-take/

[Links last checked January 2010]

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How long will it take? And what will it cost?

One of the hardest things for prospective clients to understand is the amount of time it takes to do documentation work. I’m not talking about the writing, but the other stuff — the editing, the reformatting, the pulling together of the document.

For example, some months ago someone on the STC’s Consultants and Independent Contractors discussion list asked the following:

I have been asked to sort through a bunch of documents (articles, presentations, etc.), weed out duplicate content and bad content, and perhaps do some writing to fill in gaps. I am to create a working manuscript.  The client expects the book to run about 125 pages or so, with 150 words per page, and is asking what I’d charge.

Ah! The ‘How long is a piece of string?’ question. The client assumes that the final result will be 125 pages with 150 words per page (that seems small; most Word documents I’ve worked on recently have been between 500 and 600 words per page). But what’s NOT provided is information about the ‘bunch of documents’ that already exist. Here are some of the things I’d need to find out before I would consider quoting on this work (I came up with this list in about 5 minutes — given more time, no doubt I’d add more questions):

• Are the existing documents a mess (formatting as well as writing style)? Were all documents written by the same person using the same template, or — more likely — by multiple people using multiple (or no) templates? Ask for samples! Do not take the prospective client’s word for it — most will say the documents ‘just need a little work’. Beware the word ‘just’!
• Do I have to create a 125 page (18,000 word) document from a total of, say, 600 pages and 300,000 words? If so, some serious editing and rewriting is required.
• Do all the existing documents have to fit into the one document in a specific order? If so, what is the sequence? Some serious structural decisions may need to be made.
• Is there a template already set up for the new document? Or do I have to create it?
• Are there logos and other elements (like copyright and legal statements) I need to include in the document? What’s the house style on their placement?
• What tools/tool knowledge will be needed to create the deliverable? (Word, Framemaker, Acrobat, HTML, other software?)
• Does the client need to update and maintain the document in the future? If so, do they have the tools and knowledge to do this? (The answer to this question may dictate how many ’smarts’ like autofill macros you can use in the document.)
• Can the client clearly state who the audience for this document is, and what prerequisite knowledge they assume the audience has?

Summarized below is one response to the original question, which shows a slightly different approach to the issue:

Here is how I would scope that job:

I would take all of the articles and presentations and reports and pour them into the 125-page Word document. I would format them in some reasonable way to make them consistent and workable. (8 hours) [That is, importing mixed files and formatting at a rate of 15 pages an hour.]

The next day I would print a hard copy and read through all 125 pages, making detailed notes of duplicate information, what needs to be written or rewritten, and what needs to be reorganized to make the book logical to follow. (8 hours) [That requires mindful reading and commentary development at a rate of 15 pages an hour, or four minutes a page. That is pretty fast.]

I would make copies of the document with my notes and request a meeting with client to review my plan of action. (2 to 4 hour meeting)

I would implement the changes, and depending upon how much has to be written or edited, that could take 4 hours to 2 days. (4 to 16 hours)

I would finalize the document’s format to make it consistent and presentable. (4 hours)

Once done, I’d send it out for the client’s review.

Enter client review comments. (4 hours)

Project management (2 hours)

Total = 32 to 46 hours depending upon how much writing needs to be completed.

Multiply the hours by your hourly rate.

So, what the client thought might be a day’s work can easily take a week or more. It’s way too easy for clients to underestimate the time it takes to do what they assume to be simple tasks.

Hopefully some of the strategies posed here may help you if you’re ask to take on a similar task.

See also:

• How long will the editing take?

[Link last checked January 2010; thanks to Gwynne M for asking the question, and to Tom G for offering the scoping response]

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Outlook: Save multiple attachments at once

This information applies to Outlook 2003 and 2007.

You get an email from someone and there are several attachments with it. You want to save the attachments to the same folder, but you really don’t want to right-click on each and do a ‘Save As’. Well, you don’t have to!

1. Make sure the email message is open, either fully open or in Preview mode.
2. Go to File (1) > Save Attachments (2) and then select All Attachments (2).
   
3. Click OK on the Save All Attachments window.
   
4. Then navigate to the folder where you want to save the attachments.

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Google Reader tips

I spend some of my non working hours doing crafty things with fabric. As such, I love the internet for helping me find new techniques, quick tips, helpful hints etc.

Then sometimes my two worlds collide, as in this terrific 7 minute video from Diane Gilleland on using Google Reader to organize your feeds. Her focus is on organizing her craft feeds, but the hints apply to any feeds.

If you want to view the video in the context of the author’s blog, go here: http://www.craftypod.com/2010/01/22/video-google-reader-tricks-for-craft-bloggers/

[Links last checked January 2010]

Word: Jumping to next table, graphic, or field

You can use the F5 function key in Word 2003 or 2007 to open the Go To tab on the Find and Replace window, then go to the next table, figure etc. But there’s a quicker way to jump from one object to the next.

Down in the far right corner of Word, below the vertical scroll bar, is a funny little button (the Select Browse Object button) that has double-headed up and down arrows immediately above and below it. When you first open a Word document, these arrows are black.

1. Click the round Select Browse Object button between the double-headed arrows. The object browse options display.
   
2. To browse:
   • Tables: Click the table icon .
   • Graphics: Click the image icon .
   • Fields: Click the field icon .
3. Once you’ve selected the type of object (table, graphic, field etc.), click one of the double-headed arrows to jump to the next object (click the up arrow to jump to objects earlier in the document; click the down arrow to jump to objects later in the document).

If you look carefully, once you’ve made your choice, the double-headed arrow changes to blue:

Note:  Your object selection stays the same for the open document (unless you change it), so you can use it at any time. It resets to ‘nothing selected’ when you close the document.

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