Posts matching to writing technique
All About Indexing #8: Starting An Indexing Business, Part 2: Marketing
All About Indexing #7: Starting An Indexing Business, Part 1: Training
Hi, everyone! For my last two columns, I would like to talk about how one goes about starting an indexing business. I believe that the skills needed to become a good indexer are partly innate and partly acquired. My indexing teacher, the great Kari Kells, says in the introduction to her Basic Indexing Tutorial that on her first day of an indexing class she took in library school, she knew she had found the perfect career as her teacher described the way she had always automatically sorted her photos by category, and Kari nodding and smiling as she recalled her own automatic sorting of M&Ms by color, and music by genre, then alphabetical,then chronological, etc. (Anyone out there nodding and smiling at this?)
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Thanks for Reading
With the column of June 1, “The Final Why,” The Why of Style has concluded a two-year fortnighly run. Any future columns will be occasional. My e-mail address remains open for questions and comments: . Thanks for reading, and particular thanks to those who wrote in from time to time. — Mark L. Levinson
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All About Indexing #6: Interviews With Indexers
June 9 2008
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Hi, everyone! Continuing last column’s discussion of the history of indexing, I have found that these days there are almost as many methods of index creation as there are indexers! At this point I felt like my book research could only take me so far, so I decided to interview a few longtime indexers to get some anecdotes on the topic. Mike Bennett, Ellen Chapman, Linda Hallinger, Pam Rider, Barbara Roos and Kamm Schreiner come from a variety of backgrounds and I learned a lot from speaking with them!
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The Final Why
“When we didn’t have a manual yet, when we didn’t know what to name the commands on our menus, when we needed our business cards spelled right, we couldn’t have done without you,” the boss said. “But now the product is in release, and I don’t see the ROI from fine-polishing the error messages.”
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All About Indexing #5: The Process of Index Creation
Hello again, my fellow Elephants! I would like to continue this week on the topic of “how we index”—indexing processes of yesterday and today and the history of indexing technologies. The American Society of Indexers (www.asindexing.org)website gives the following standard process:
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Zero-Based English
I’ve run into people who make a virtue out of ignorance. On both sides of the fence. Some are technical writers and they say, “Because I know nothing about your product, I can serve as a model of the user’s point of view.”
“But you’re nothing like our users,” say the technicians, “because you’re not in the same business.” Then they tell the writer, “Because my English isn’t very good, my writing can serve as a model of how to write for people whose English isn’t very good.”
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“But you’re nothing like our users,” say the technicians, “because you’re not in the same business.” Then they tell the writer, “Because my English isn’t very good, my writing can serve as a model of how to write for people whose English isn’t very good.”
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All About Indexing #4: A History of Index Creation
Hi, everyone! For this column I would like to talk a little about the history of the index. I don’t think this is something I learned about in indexing school, so writing this will be a history lesson for all of us!
Even before books were invented,the Greeks and Romans were already hard at work discovering different ways of organizing information. One of the first forms of written material they used was the papyrus scroll, but it was not very efficient when it came to information retrieval.
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Even before books were invented,the Greeks and Romans were already hard at work discovering different ways of organizing information. One of the first forms of written material they used was the papyrus scroll, but it was not very efficient when it came to information retrieval.
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Reg and T.M.
May 1 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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There are three kinds of trademarks: our own trademarks, trademarks of other companies we like to be on good terms with, and trademarks of other companies we don’t care about. We demand respect for our own trademarks, we give respect to the trademarks of other companies we like to be on good terms with, and hey, we don’t much care about trademarks of other companies we don’t care about.
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All About Indexing #3: Index vs. Concordance
English is Only Human
April 15 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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The English language is only human. It didn’t anticipate everything you might want to say.
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All About Indexing #2: The Importance of Indexes
The most frequently-asked question that professional indexers get, it seems, is “can’t a computer do that?” My next column will deal with the differences between an index and a concordance, which is what computers can do, but in the meantime I want to explain what an index is and why indexes are a necessary part of a book. The American Society of Indexers website (www.asindexing.org)gives an excellent overview for anyone wanting to know basic information:
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Can it be both raw and right?
April 1 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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“You know you guys are crazy?” said old Genady. “You tell one person that the way you write the material makes it right or wrong, but you ask another person to tell you whether it’s right or wrong before you’ve written it correctly and you’re angry that he tries to correct the writing.”
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All About Indexing #1: Indexing in Israel
Hi! My name is Shoshana Hurwitz,and I’ll be doing a column for Elephant about a profession that seems to belittle-known in Israel (though I hope to change that!): indexing. To see an overview of my background and how I ended up becoming a professional indexer, check out my member bio page.
For my first column, I'd like to talk about how indexing is perceived in Israel. I don’t believe it to be any coincidence that the very same month that I found my true calling professionally was the month that my husband, daughters and I started our journey towards aliyah, which will culminate this coming July. But as excited as I was about my new love of indexing, I was dismayed to discover that my new internet friends in Israel were not quite as much. Here in Israel,they told me, indexing is not really thought of as a profession in itself. Itis something that librarians do, something that tech writers do, but not something that just is.
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For my first column, I'd like to talk about how indexing is perceived in Israel. I don’t believe it to be any coincidence that the very same month that I found my true calling professionally was the month that my husband, daughters and I started our journey towards aliyah, which will culminate this coming July. But as excited as I was about my new love of indexing, I was dismayed to discover that my new internet friends in Israel were not quite as much. Here in Israel,they told me, indexing is not really thought of as a profession in itself. Itis something that librarians do, something that tech writers do, but not something that just is.
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Loops
Excerpted from my book FrameScript for Newbies Copyright [7/17/2007] by Paul Schnall
Loops are a way of moving through a book or document and running lines of code on each object of a particular type. For example, looping through every paragraph (paragraph being the object) in a document and searching for a specific word or text is easily done using this construct.
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Loops are a way of moving through a book or document and running lines of code on each object of a particular type. For example, looping through every paragraph (paragraph being the object) in a document and searching for a specific word or text is easily done using this construct.
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Deplorable Plurals
March 15 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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Writers who find the word “and” overused substitute “along with,” “in addition to,” “not to mention,” “as well as,” or “besides,” without realizing that each of those substitutes has its own connotation and none of them has the power of creating a plural.
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Knowing Where You Are
March 3 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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Excerpted from my book FrameScript for Newbies Copyright [7/17/2007] by Paul Schnall
It is always good to know where you are, this is also true in scripting. Most FrameMaker objects have a text location or text range property. This property tells you the coordinates of the object. Then, these coordinates can be used to place other object relative to this location. For example, if you have the text range of a paragraph, then you can specify a new text location. The new text location can be anywhere within this text range. The text location can be used to add text at that point.
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It is always good to know where you are, this is also true in scripting. Most FrameMaker objects have a text location or text range property. This property tells you the coordinates of the object. Then, these coordinates can be used to place other object relative to this location. For example, if you have the text range of a paragraph, then you can specify a new text location. The new text location can be anywhere within this text range. The text location can be used to add text at that point.
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“Such As” and Suchlike
Kipling mentioned “such boastings as the Gentiles use, or lesser breeds without the Law.” In other words, only a certain kind of boasting. But if he had written “boastings, such as the Gentiles use,” it would include all boastings and those of the Gentiles would be just an example.
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Documenting your Scripts
Excerpted from my book FrameScript for Newbies Copyright [7/17/2007] by Paul Schnall
As you write scripts you should always document them. Anything that is relevant to the creation and use of the script can be put in the script as a comment. It is always advisable to put a section at the top of the script to give you and other readers pertinent information. This information can include:
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As you write scripts you should always document them. Anything that is relevant to the creation and use of the script can be put in the script as a comment. It is always advisable to put a section at the top of the script to give you and other readers pertinent information. This information can include:
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The Tense for What Never Happened
February 15 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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It makes sense to say “I’ve never seen such a beautiful view.” But there’s a complication. If I’m looking at such a beautiful view right now, how can I say I’ve never seen one?
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'Hello World': Inserting New Text
February 3 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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Excerpted from my book FrameScript for Newbies (Copyright [7/17/2007] by Paul Schnall)
Today we will add text to the document, and then we will add a paragraph to a document.
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Today we will add text to the document, and then we will add a paragraph to a document.
Inserting Text
To insert text use the New Text command. But first:Read more...
Too Much Determination
February 1 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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I knew I couldn’t put across an explanation, but perhaps I could at least put across the impression that I think I know what I’m talking about. “It comes down to a difference between English and Hebrew,” I said. “The word ‘it,’ in the objective case, can serve as a relative pronoun in Hebrew but not in English.”
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FrameScript for Newbies
January 17 2008
(edited 11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Excerpted from my book FrameScript for Newbies Copyright [7/17/2007] by Paul Schnall
In general FrameScript is used to perform complicated tasks on large books or on whole document sets. Scripts can also be written to perform tasks on the document level, these range from manipulating paragraphs to tables. Large complicated scripts are usually written by professional scriptwriters, but with a little help any technical writer can acquire the skills needed to start writing scripts quickly and easily.
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In general FrameScript is used to perform complicated tasks on large books or on whole document sets. Scripts can also be written to perform tasks on the document level, these range from manipulating paragraphs to tables. Large complicated scripts are usually written by professional scriptwriters, but with a little help any technical writer can acquire the skills needed to start writing scripts quickly and easily.
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The Multi-Tailed Example
January 15 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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You try to write the example so that it reaches out a well-directed hand to the reader, and the reader grabs the example by the tail.
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Don't Overshorten
January 1 2008
(edited 1 year ago)
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The Wherefore of Style
December 15 2007
(edited 1 year ago)
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 | I ask about the purpose, and I’m answered about the background. “Why do the user’s neckties appear on the screen in that particular order?” I ask, expecting to hear how that particular order serves the purpose of benefiting the user. “They appear according to the sequence in which they arrive from the database,” says Dror the developer. |
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The Andor and the Orboths
What can we do to show that the slash applies to a whole phrase? Maybe pad it with spaces?
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Forever HIPO
Before you set about doing something, you should know what you’re starting with, what you’re planning to do to it, and what you expect to wind up with at the end. And that pattern of input, process, and output is hierarchical.
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Unstating the Obvious
Granted, writing needs to acknowledge the known, at least tacitly, in order to stably introduce the unknown. But still, every sentence - even the first one - should add informational value if possible.
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Time for an Update
Before the progress bar reached 100 percent, I wrote the preceding thirty-two editions of this column. Now that they’ve all appeared, it’s time for an update because in the meantime some e-mail has come in.
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The Phrasals and the Had Had
October 1 2007
(edited 1 year ago)
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Who cares what’s a phrasal verb and what isn’t? In my experience, the only people who care are people looking for an excuse to end a sentence with a preposition. And they’re wasting their time.
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Necessary Unnecessary Facts
In order to write correctly what you know, you need to know more than you write. Hemingway said, “When a writer omits things he does not know, they show like holes in his writing.”
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The Overgrown Dash
The em dash was not just left off the keyboard. While no one was looking at it over on the upper-ascii sidelines, it was sabotaged..
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The Tommy Syndrome
Tommy, in The Who’s rock opera of the same name, achieved spiritual enlightenment after psychosomatically losing the powers of hearing, sight, and speech, so he tried to tell his disciples all to “Put in your ear plugs, put on your eye shades, you know where to put the cork!” The Tommy Syndrome is everywhere.
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When Numerals Come 1st
Even the 4-H club tries not to start a sentence with a numeral, and imagine how difficult it must be for them. But is there logic behind the rule?
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