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Create a Rock Solid Foundation for Your Dream Business (Video version of workshop now available)

About this video training course Maybe you’re thinking it’s time to branch out on your own, maybe it’s time to move up in your company, or maybe it’s time for something different. No matter which scenario, for someone to hire you or your company, you must be THE solution that…

New Slack Channels – TC Dojo and Arbortext Users

Slack reminds us of the old IRC channels, if anyone out there remembers those. Liz was invited to Slack pretty early on but resisted using it because she said it was so isolated. In its earliest days, it was mostly browser-based, every space was separate, and you could only see…

Problems upgrading your Arbortext Styler stylesheets from 6.1 to 7.0?

Quite by accident, we noticed that some stylesheets can have issues when upgrading to 7.0 from 6.1. A day or so ago, Liz was working with some stylesheets that hadn’t been touched since mid 2016 when she published her books. When she opened the stylesheet in 7.0 M080, Styler crashed…

Teaching Martians to make a sandwich–How Technical Writers can improve patient safety

There’s a well-known exercise to experienced technical writers: How do you teach a Martian to make a sandwich. It’s so well known that we talk about it as an exercise in best practices for user experience and modern instructional design. In the last few years, this exercise has become a…

Adepters – What is it and how do I find it?

Are you an Arbortext user? Have you heard the word Adepters and wonder what it means? Adepters is the name of the original Arbortext user mailing list which was launched in 1996. At that time there the web was still new, so this mailing list quickly became the go-to resource for Arbortext customers. Where…

Which TC Dojo level are you?

The TC Dojo is a virtual meeting place for the Technical Communications professional. Whether you are just starting out in the field or you are a well-seasoned expert, everyone can gain valuable learning at the TC Dojo. We called it the a dojo because a dojo (dōjō) is a Japanese…

Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?

Technical writers are paying more attention to UI/UX because documentation is part of the user experience. Technical writers, who explain user interface elements and design how-to documents for user tasks and procedures, know when a design choice will have repercussions. We can recognize when a design choice is similar to one we’ve encountered…

Subscription licenses are here to stay

Updated: May 2017 The software companies of world has decided the answer to that question is yes. I first heard about subscription licenses from Adobe back in 2013. Then Microsoft followed. For good or bad, whether we like it or not, it’s here to stay. I’ve had a crash course in subscription licensing…