Maruthi Prasanna

     Recently I watched the 2021 Bollywood movie, Shershaah. The movie tells the story of Capt. Vikram Batra. He fought and sacrificed his life in the Kargil war. He is a recipient of Parama Veera Chakra, the highest gallantry award. What can make someone go for the death run charging at the enemy? Capt. Vikram Batra was in the prime of his youth. He had loving parents and a devoted girlfriend. He was a successful army officer at a very young age. The noble instincts of a human and the yearning to achieve can be even dearer than life. Every human being wants to feel appreciated, and it is among the strongest of all human needs. Every leader and manager must note that we can inspire people and tap their potential by giving sincere appreciation. Title image courtesy by anonymous internet source.  The Kargil heights sit majestically on the Indian frontier.  A tribute to PVC Capt. Vikram Batra. The "Watching over Kargil, still guarding the nation" slogan is from an anonymous inte

     There is one thing universal about successful managers. They keep increasing the performance benchmark every time. It applies to an athletic coach who wants to make his trainee globally competitive. I have worked under cruelly kind managers who are very ruthless in getting the tasks done. They push you to improve your competency and skills every day. You may have had a tough time working under this manager, and still, it is not something to be resented. Weathers the pressures work? We start looking for ways to do things better when the competitive edge is so narrow, and even a marginal improvement in something will give you an edge over your competitors. I had my dilemmas over if harsh managers are good or bad. A good manager sets difficult but attainable benchmarks and allows members to execute tasks with relative autonomy. There is no use flogging a dead horse. Spend time grooming the people who are motivated to do their best. I have spent time with people who do not have enough

     I want to share some of my learnings starting from the beginning days of my Technical Writing career. Everyone in the project must have a cursory understanding of the following, and the Technical Writer must understand it in detail: Language standards Learn the style guides. MSTP (Microsoft Manual of Style - currently called Microsoft Style Guide) is among the most widely followed style guides. You can access it online for free and even download the PDF for offline reference. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/ There are several other style guides, but it is mostly enough to refer only to Microsoft Style Guide. The following are some of the key takeaways: Avoid passive voice - sentences in passive voice are generally longer and harder to read. Use only the simple and easy words understood by the global audience with varying degrees of English knowledge. Your writing must have the same meaning for all people from different geographies and cultures. Never use a

     Look at this famous quote from Hippocrates: Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance. Being opinionated is a disservice to ourselves. Opinions divide people rather than bringing them together. It is a dead-end in our thinking process. The spirit of inquiry and rational thinking ends the moment we form an opinion. An opinion is either lazy thinking or no thinking at all.  Opinions are the foundation for prejudice. I am, and I have been guilty of being opinionated. I struggled hard to shed opinions on politics, religion, and many other things. We can save ourselves by exercising discretion in how we gather and process information. The food we eat may be having high calories but less protein and vital nutrients. The same applies to a lot of information we acquire. Every one of us wants to build muscles and not the flab. Do yourself the self-help by getting rid of opinions and prejudice. I like the following quotes that deal with the nature of opinions and prej

     In any project, success depends on good planning and execution. It takes diligent planning and execution to make a Technical Documentation project successful. We have a lessor error margin because we have less staff, less representation in senior management, and hence lesser bargaining power. Any failure in planning and execution will look glaring, and surely no one wants to put oneself in an odd situation. Success in both planning and execution depends on asking the right questions at the right time. Ask questions regarding what is in the project scope and why. Planning is not a single step. It goes in parallel with execution. Ask who the key stakeholders are, the mandatory deliverables, and the intended recipients.  Gather all possible reference material and also check the relevance of the reference material. Develop the document structure and get it reviewed. Be more formal with stakeholders outside of your team. Identify the process to follow and arrive at a common ground. Jus

     India will be celebrating its 75th independence day in another year. There is no shortage of pessimists these days, and we can easily list the things that are not going well. But every one of us will be roaring optimists if we can time travel 75 years back. India was in desperate poverty back then. More than two-thirds of our nearly 300 million people lived below the poverty line and struggled to afford even the basic food, shelter, and clothing. The Indian population was starving, and millions were killed and displaced in a civil war that divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Fast forward to the current - we are still a developing country. India has grown, albeit not in a way as to compare with our neighbor China. But any comparison is unjust. We have done well in most aspects, with a functional democracy, thriving democratic institutions, large and small corporations generating employments, and so on. India added a large number of private-sector jobs since the 90s. 

     It is easy to create GIF animation using Microsoft PowerPoint. If the help file is a part of your deliverables, you can add GIF animations to make it more user-friendly and attractive. I used the same technique in my previous post, and let us see how I did it from the following GIF file: Related articles: Contrasting color arrows to mark UI text The easiest way to create video tutorials The ability to learn is the key to survival. We can learn faster by learning from each other.

     Today, I want to present a simple idea; make nice arrows to point to a UI element on a screenshot. I typically edit a screenshot already saved to disk using MS Paint. Till very recently, I used plain arrows either in black or red depending on the background contrast. It did not look very pleasing, and now I make them in contrasting outline color and fill color. It is simple and easy, and the following are the steps: Just reverse the colors if you want a different color contrast. Related articles: Contrasting color arrows to mark UI text The easiest way to create video tutorials The ability to learn is the key to survival. We can learn faster by learning from each other.

     Follow the industry trends, but do not follow them blindly. Some of us are obsessed with new tools and trends and constantly yearn to shift to the trending tools. It is as if we are not modern and are left behind if we are not doing what a few others are doing. I have observed this trend in our preference for the authoring tools to use for Technical Writing. There is no silver bullet tool that will solve all our problems. Some Technical Writing tools are best suited for collaboration and reusability but are hard to set up and maintain. Some of the tools are especially suited for desktop publishing but do not support collaboration. Every commercially successful authoring tool has its unique USP and is the best, but users make the real difference and not the tools. A company may not benefit by shifting between tools very often. There will be some new trends each year, and it may not be viable to keep changing the tools used for authoring each year. Be innovative and also be conserva

     I started toying with the idea of using Markdown for documentation only a couple of months ago and happened to pick Typora as my choice of Markdown Editor. You can tutor this tool by yourself in a single day, but it takes time to learn some nuances if you are learning it all by yourself. For a long time, I thought Typora doesn't have the option to add a cover page, header, footer, and page numbers, and last week I figured out that we can do all these by using the YAMAL front matter. You can add typora-root-url to the YAMAL front matter to insert images by their relative path. To know more, see: https://support.typora.io/YAML/ https://support.typora.io/Images/ Related articles: YAMAL front matter in Typora Use markdown for your README Why I am gung-ho about Typora Conditional text in markdown Author documents using markdown Using mermaid in markdown Do agile technical documentation using markdown Tool independent technical documentation Techniques for cost-effective technical

     I am reading Dale Carnegie's “How to win friends and influence people” and came across FATHER FORGETS by W. Livingston Larned in the book. The transcript is as follows: Listen Son, I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little hand crumpled under your cheek and blonde curls sticky over your wet forehead. I have broken into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guilty, I came to your bedside. There are things which I am thinking, son; I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face a mere dab with the towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. As you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned an

     Recently I happened to read Mahabharata in English by CR (C. Rajagopalachari). It is not the first time that I have read Mahabharata. Being Indians, most of us are familiar with this epic piece of literature. But what is unique about any Classic is, you have a new interpretation of it each time you read it based on your situation. The following things struck me this time: Focus on your core skills Fight for yourself Practice patience Make friends Slipping standards could mean doom Focus on your core skills: Arjuna is one of the prominent characters. He focused on his core skills, and that is the secret of his success. He is among the great heroes. He learns warfare tricks under the best trainers and gains skills in weaponry and warfare strategy. He identifies that he is better than most others in his skills with bows and arrows. Instead of being overconfident, he relentlessly practices archery. He is always vigilant and never leaves a thing for a chance. He is self-aware. He unde

     I was looking for ways to add a cover page, header, and footer in Markdown and just figured out how we do it in Typora Markdown editor. It is easy. Set the header and footer using YAML Front Matter. The YAML front matter must be the first thing in the file and must be valid YAML, set between triple-dashed lines.  Source: https://support.typora.io/ The following is an example for setting the document title, header, and footer using YAML: --- title: Agile Technical Documentation header: A Quick Guide for Agile Technical Documentation footer: ${pageNo} --- Apart from this, you need to make a few PDF export settings. Select File > Preferences > Export > PDF and select the checkbox for Read and overwrite export settings from YAMAL front matters . Now, the document exported into PDF will have A Quick Guide for Agile Technical Documentation in its header and page number in its footer. If you need a cover page as well for the PDF export, paste the following content in the Ap