glued organization

This is a really interesting discussion about what tech writers traditionally call glue text and advanced organizers in tech docs. Many moons ago I had a dog-eared text with an entire chapter dedicated to the effective use of transitional and organizational textual elements in technical documents. Admittedly, I've been a long-time advocate of their use.

Hackos' position and descriptions are relevant at this moment because we're currently working through the procedural and declarative information module in WRT 307. I've always presented declarative information as the contextual bubble in which procedural information is considered. But I like how JoAnn describes the common misuse of contextual information and how it can bog down or compromise the text.

With the discussion of structured documentation aside, I think I'll be using this article in WRT 407 this fall. I'm still hoping to restructure the writing activities within a DITA framework. We'll see how it goes.

... and because I like to brag: Opening day I landed a few pan fish and one wee Large Mouth. On the second glorious morning I pulled this beauty on a night crawler. Papa was returned in good health with a clean release.

randomness

I caught a few minutes of Pulp Fiction last night on the idiot box. It loses a lot when edited for TV. It's been a while since I saw the entire reel. I remembering needing to watch it twice to appreciate it. This time I caught the scene where Uma tells JT that there are two types of people in the world: Elvis people and Beatles people.

I think I could have been an Elvis person if it wasn't for a neighbor I had for a few years growing up. She was a cruel, large, hateful women with two bratty kids and a rail-thin worm of a husband. They moved to Jersey from Texas and liked to explain at ever turn how they had just moved to Jersey from Texas. When Elvis died I was 11 years old. I remember that it was all over the three channels we got at the time. Every radio station was playing montages for days. That reaction was expected. What I didn't expect and remember most displeasurably from August 1977 is my neighbor walking around her back yard sobbing uncontrollably about the Large Man's passing. This went on for hours. If you didn't know any better, you'd think she was having liposuction done with a vacuum and a straw. At one point, I remember my old man just looking toward her yard and shaking his head. He was speechless, and that's a pretty hard thing to do to my old man.

So I think that's why I never developed a better appreciation for Elvis. I love the Blues. I listen to Jazz. I like Rockabilly more than I probably should. But thanks to my hideous neighbor, I just can't get my arms around Elvis (and there honestly is not a pun intended there).

nothing for its own sake

This is exactly why I think I do a pretty decent job of keeping UC from jumping all over every next killer app that raises its sexy yet untested head.

thank you facebook

Hillarious! This is exactly why I have such a hard time seeing social network spaces for anything more than what they are.

oh loathsome blogger

Fantastic gaps in my writing. Same old excuses. Some catch up: WRT 307 is clicking along. It's a lively bunch in that the discussions are rich with the students' personal examples and lively in that the discussions deviate a bit from the routine, "I also too agree" blather. It's still early in the semester, but I'm hopeful they can sustain the activity. I've not found it necessary to get involved in the discussion yet (although I do fight the the urge). The podcasts seem to be well-received. I haven't heard from any students that they'd prefer the ol' textual responses and feedback.

Attending the NYS Tech Summit yesterday and today. My overall assessment: plenty lame. The vendor displays are all hardware/network wiring related, which should be expected since CableExpress is the sponsor. The presentations are mostly sales-pitchy. I actually found myself nodding off in one this morning. I need to be more selective with these types of conferences. I used to go for the workshop/instructional conferences, but that was when I was doing hardcore tech com. It's harder to justify those now. Maybe something next year.

Must catch up on my reading, which almost always leaves me with something to write about.

the Q word

I'm reading this cool little book titled 201 Principles of Software Development. It's a fun read - I get through five or six principles each morning waiting for the bus.

I've long seen parallel principles among software development, technical communication, and instructional design. I'm still convinced that there are a set of universal principles that apply to all design/development disciplines. The few principles in the book that address quality remind me that there are core considerations all designers/developers need to work from.

In technical communications (and software development), the word "quality" does not have a singular meaning. The subjective nature of seeing quality in an information product makes measuring quality a moving target. And this is something that technical communicators need to understand. On some projects, quality might be an elegant document design or logical information structure. On a lot of projects, quality might be delivering a solid, functional product in a timely and cost-effective manner. The issue for technical communicators is that not all definitions of quality are compatible. That's where the fun in the project meetings begins.

professional shorthand

Before we ended our one-week classroom session in WRT 307, we talked a little bit about the use of informal writing in technical and professional contexts.

I just read a brief note about a Pew study which shows 64 percent of teenagers admit they use informal writing styles in their school work. There is the now folklore story about the British student who submitted an assignment written entirely in text message shorthand. That's not what the Pew study revealed. More specifically (and perhaps more challenging for writing instructors), the study indicated that young students find it acceptable and easy to integrate emoticons, informal punctuation and grammar, and text message shorthand while authoring in formal contexts.

So rather than take a hard-ass instructional stance, it seems that our challenge as teachers of writing is to understand how these stylistic changes affect what we're trying to achieve in the classroom. And perhaps the challenge is greater for professional and technical genres: integrating informal styles in such a way as to not compromise the organization, logic, structure, and concision of a document.