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Resources for technical writers
This page lists various resources (online and printed) that
technical writers are
likely to find useful. The resources are grouped into the following
categories:
 forms and information for contractors
papers
by Abelard consultants
professional
societies
discussion
groups
style
references
writing
for print
writing
for the web
standards
tutorials
dictionaries
and encyclopedias
other
references
Search this site
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Forms & information for contractors |
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Contractor timesheets (electronic) |
Spreadsheet-like PDF form that can be signed and authorised digitally. |
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Contractor
timesheets (electronic): instructions for use |
Instructions for contractors
and for authorisers, with two Flash movies demonstrating step-by-step how
to use our electronic timesheets. |
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Contractor timesheet (paper) |
Non-electronic timesheet (in PDF format). |
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Direct Credit Authority form |
Form authorising Abelard Consulting to pay a contractor directly into a specified bank account. |
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Standard Choice form |
Form authorising Abelard Consulting
to pay a contractor's superannuation entitlements to a particular fund. |
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Rates paid to contractors
placed by Abelard Consulting over the last 12 months [last updated: October 2008
2008] |
Highest: $85.00
Lowest: $60.00
Average: $69.00 [= arithmetic mean]
Median: $67.50 [= middle value]
Mode: $65.00 [= most frequent]
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Papers
by Abelard consultants |
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Language
in motion |
There are growing signs of
a swing back towards linguistic puritanism, to the view that there are correct
and incorrect ways of writing and speaking. Proponents of this view must,
however, accommodate the rich variability that the language has shown over
the centuries (much of which is of respectable pedigree). This paper describes
some of that variability and then challenges a number of arguments for linguistic
prescriptivism (the view that, despite linguistic variability, some usages
are right and some wrong, come what may). The paper ends with an exploration
of how writers can continue to embrace the goal of writing for maximal communicative
efficiency while still accepting that change is inevitable, and even continuous. |
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Readability
statistics: what do they really prove? |
The Plain English movement,
and legal challenges to organisations publishing indigestible public documents,
has fueled a resurgence of interest in readability and its measurement.
Sentential measures of readability (based on sentence length and syllable
count) have many supporters. The readability statistics that Microsoft Word
gives are based on sentential measures. This paper argues that sentential
measures cannot define readability, nor can they be reliably used as indicators
of readability. Numerous examples of texts that score well on sentential
measures of readability but which are of dubious readability are given.
This is followed by an analysis of the purported correlation between readability
and sentential measures, and by a critique of the methods commonly used to validate readability formulas. |
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Writing
English for an international audience |
A critique of the guidelines
issued in 2003 by the International Council for Technical Communication
(INTECOM). |
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On wikis
and the death of technical writing |
An examination of the view
that end-user documentation is best written by end-users, collaborating
through a medium such as a wiki. |
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Controlling technical vocabulary |
On the importance of limiting
technical vocabulary to a sub-set of possible terms and the usefulness of
subject-specific thesauri in achieving that goal. |
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Professional
societies |
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www.astcvic.org.au |
Australian Society for Technical
Communication Inc (Victoria) |
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www.astnsw.org.au |
Australian Society for Technical
Communication Inc (NSW) |
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www.stc.org |
Society for Technical Communication |
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www.istc.org.uk/ |
Institute of Scientific and
Technical communicators |
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www.communication.org.au/ |
Communication Research Institute
of Australia |
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Discussion
groups |
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www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter/ |
Australian Technical Writers
discussion forum and announcement service. To subscribe, send a blank email
to austechwriter-request@freelists.org
with SUBSCRIBE as the subject. For more information about austechwriter,
click here. |
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www.raycomm.com/techwhirl |
Join the TECHWR-L discussion
forum from this web site. The site also has useful articles on technical
writing. |
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www.frameusers.com |
General FrameMaker site, offering
a number of discussion forums covering various aspects of FrameMaker. |
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Free Framers list |
Free Framers forum, for users
of FrameMaker. To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com
with "subscribe framers" as the message (without the quotes). |
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groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT |
Discussion forum for online
help authors. To subscribe, send a blank email to HATT-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. |
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Style
references |
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www.ibm.com/ibm/easy/ |
IBM Ease of Use Site |
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Writing
for print |
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Type & Layout: Are you
communicating or just making shapes by Colin Wheildon, Worsley Press,
2005. |
Reproduces the results of
numerous studies on the communicative potential (or lack of it) of various
fonts, font styles, font colour, paragraph alignments, bolding, italicising,
capitalising, etc. |
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Writing
for the web |
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usableweb.com/ |
Discusses usability and its
importance in site design. Also has links to over 1,400 other sites dealing
with usability issues. |
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www.intrack.com/intranet |
Intranet reference and resource
site. |
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www.aspdeveloper.net/ |
Useful information and tools
for developing active server pages. |
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info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ |
Web Style Guide: Basic Design
Principles for Creating Web Sites. On-line text of a book by Patrick J Lynch
and Sarah Horton (Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN: 0300076754) |
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www.sev.com.au/webzone/design.asp |
The Sevloid Guide to Web Design:
tips, tricks and techniques on every aspect of web design |
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www.webtechniques.com |
As its name suggest: plenty
of useful techniques for web developers, with access to discussion forums,
reviews, etc |
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www.webword.com |
The site of WebWord Usability
Consulting, offering "industrial strength usability". |
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Standards |
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www.standards.com.au |
Provides an online ordering
service for various standards of relevance to technical writing:
- AS/NZS ISO/IEC 18019:2007 Software and system engineering - Guidelines
for the design and preparation of user documentation for application
software
- AS/NZS 4598.1:1999 Guide to the development of application software
- Software user documentation
- AS/NZS 4258:1994 Software user documentation process
- AS/NZS 4598.2:1999 Guide to the development of application software
- On-screen documentation
- AS 3876-1991 Information processing - Guidelines for the documentation
of computer-based application systems
- AS 3897-1991 Information processing - Guidelines for the management
of software documentation
- AS 3898-1991 Information processing - User documentation and cover
information for consumer software packages
- AS 2645-1987 Information processing - Documentation symbols and conventions
for data, program and system flowcharts, program network charts and
systems resources charts
- AS/NZS 999:1999 Information and documentation - Guidelines for the
content, organization and presentation of indexes
- AS/NZS 4449:1997 Information and documentation - Electronic manuscript
preparation and markup
- AS 4006-1992 Software test documentation
- AS 3967.1-1991 Information processing - SGML support facilities -
Techniques for using SGML - SGML Tutorial
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www.w3.org |
The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software,
and tools) to lead the web to its full potential as a forum for information,
commerce, communication, and collective understanding. On this site, you'll
find W3C news as well as links to information about W3C technologies and
getting involved in W3C. |
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Tutorials |
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www.w3schools.com |
Offers many free Web-building
tutorials, covering HTML, XHTML, XML, XSL, WAP, JavaScript etc |
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Dictionaries
and encyclopedias |
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foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html |
Free online dictionary of
computing. |
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www.pcwebopaedia.com |
Encyclopedia of the web. |
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www.whatis.com |
Dictionary of technical terms. |
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Other
references |
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www.infomap.com |
Information Mapping resource |
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www.useit.com |
Jakob Nielsen's web site,
covering mostly web usability issues |
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