Maruthi Prasanna

     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 culture...

     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 o...

     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...

     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 si...

     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 al...