Computers: 10 Tips for Tech-Writers

10 Tips for Tech-Writers

Written by Glenn Murray

Tech-writing is a tricky business. It’s not a very high profile industry, so there’s not much support around. Follow these 10 quick tips, and you’ll be well on your way to a satisfying tech-writing career.

Follow a sensible career path… STEP 1: Start in a team STEP 2: Stay only just long enough STEP 3: Manage yourself STEP 4: Manage a team STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on repparttar market) Knowledge is your lifeblood – learn repparttar 107698 politics of your company. Know who knows what. Find someone who consistently gives you timely, reliable, technically accurate answers, and get their name tattooed on your shoulder! Every company has at least one. And they may not be in repparttar 107699 project manager/product manager/customer/programmer roles. They are generally repparttar 107700 people who’ve used repparttar 107701 product in repparttar 107702 real world, and dealt with real world customers. Communicate WITH, not AT. Tech-writers don’t have enough power to get away with communicating at. Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and write it up on repparttar 107703 board). Develop good product and domain knowledge – The more you can figure out for yourself, repparttar 107704 better off you’ll be (and repparttar 107705 more respect you’ll get from repparttar 107706 techies).

10 Time Saving Keyboard Shortcuts

Written by Steve Robson

Time is money. And when you constantly have to divide your time between your mouse and your keyboard, your workflow rate really slows down.

That's particularly true when you're working on a laptop, where repparttar pointing device is even slower.

The answer - short of growing another arm - is to learn a few "handy" keyboard shortcuts. Here are 10 of repparttar 107697 best:

1. Make a quick exit:

ALT - F4 will terminate any program immediately.

2. Flick - don't click:

ALT - TAB to flick through open programs.

3. Make a quick selection:

CTRL - SHIFT and move cursor with left / right / up / down arrows to quickly select areas of text.

4. Cut, copy and paste to repparttar 107698 chase:

CTRL - X / C / V to cut, copy and paste selected text.

5. Undo what you've done:

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