But technical publications still need to be produced. As long as products are going to market, the technical documentation has to be there on how to use them.

Some companies are turning to off-shoring, but, in the words of one former client who was forced by upper echelons to go that route, “It’s a challenge since English is not the first language of the writers… things … need to be sacrificed along the way.”

Is there another solution? You betcha.

On-shore outsourcing.

At Precision Wordage, we’ve been taking only outsource projects now for about 15 years. The projects we work on minimize client costs because the client pays only for the actual writing project (and gets a high quality product in the process). No overhead, no paid vacations, no severance packages when the project is over.

If your company is looking for ways to cut costs, consider using an outsource company. Crunch the numbers and you’ll discover that technical writing from an outsource vendor will deliver the most bang for the buck, especially if you can negotiate a flat bid or not-to-exceed deal.

And if the writer is American, chances are the technical communication will actually communicate.

- Su

Localization means adaptation of the language in a document or software to a new culture or region. This could be as simple as changing the spelling from British English to American English (for example, “colour” to “color”) or it could be much more complex.

Sometimes, when manuals are written in foreign languages (particularly East Asian languages) and translated to English, things are somewhat less than intelligible. And hijinks ensue. We writers affectionately refer to such abominations as “Engrish” or perhaps “Chinglish” in the case of a certain well-known language.

The problem arises when the translation is done by machine “translators” (which are mostly little more than word substituters) or persons who are barely literate in English. Underneath that, the quality of the original manual in the foreign language may not have been particularly good. The result is often a very confusing (and sometimes highly amusing) set of instructions.

“The luxuring wireless remote controlling stretches out and draws back the door” (translation: “Deluxe Wireless Remote Controlled Retractable Gate”) may be hilarious, but it doesn’t exactly put across the right concept.

But what does one do about it?

That’s where competent tech writers come in. We can take the most garbled manual and turn it into a sparkling jewel of clarity and usefulness. A good tech writer has a “knack” for deciphering what the original-language writer was trying to say, however goofy the translation, and re-expressing it in English that can be understood.

- David

In today’s fast-paced information age, we rarely have the luxury of hands-on instruction. In fact, technologies change so fast, and the amount of technology needed to survive in this society expands so rapidly, that one-on-one learning has become nonviable.

So how do we keep on top of these shifting technologies? And how do we make it possible for others to follow at a speed that makes production practical?

Through documentation.

Information is gold. Badly written information is lead. Accurate data clearly presented drives sales, reduces support, increases employee efficiency, opens new opportunities.

Technologies are lost only when they are not clearly and effectively communicated. Products are under- or incorrectly utilized only when the user does not have quick access to easy-to-follow procedures.

Investing in documentation is the way to ensure that your product or activities actually do survive into the future.

Get your technology documented.

- Su

The idea is to have a common set of rules that can be used across different documents.

And why would we want this?

Most businesses have a corporate image. This can include one or more logos, specific colors and specific type faces. As part of a company’s brand recognition, using templates in your documents allows for a continuity of image throughout all publications.

Another reason is speed. With a well-designed template, a document can be formatted to top-quality professional appearance quickly and easily. If every document published had to be formatted manually to match a common style, publishing costs would go up faster than the price of real estate in SoCal.

The process is simple: A document is either created directly from within a template, in which case the correct formatting can be applied as it is authored; or the document, already authored, has the template attributes applied to it.

Updates or refinements to your brand image are also easy to make with a template (another cost savings). Instead of making changes to every document, you can change the template and let the changes cascade through your documents automatically.

Invest in good template design for your publications department, whether you use Microsoft® Word, Adobe® FrameMaker®, Adobe InDesign®, or any other publishing tools, and ensure that your templates include instructions on how to use them!
The problems our clients can create for themselves when they don’t use templates range from comic to incredibly expensive, but that’s another blog on another day.

- David

At Precision Wordage, we follow the rule “two sets of eyes, minimum.” No matter how good the writer, no matter how clean a draft, whether you write it or we do, an author cannot proof his own work.

What skill set does it take to do a good proof job?

The most vital skill is the ability to spell. Spell checkers can catch flagrant misspellings, but won’t catch those nasty homonymic errors. “He road the hoarse across the open rode, ignoring his horse cough.” You see what I mean.

The next skill is grammar. When I was a kid, I used to diagram sentences for fun. It came as a shock to discover that diagramming hasn’t been taught for decades. Makes me feel old. The PWI team knows their syntax (the rules for forming words into correct sentences) cold.

Then there’s style. The basic bible for publishing is The Chicago Manual of Style. But then there’s the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Writing, and who knows how many other upstart new publications to cover the morass of media rules, regs, recks and refusals on grammar relating to technology, not to mention classics like Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Our guys know `em all. And then some.

A proofer has to be able to think. For example, we deal with a lot of new technology, with scores of words that didn’t exist twenty years ago. If the proofer hits a term that’s spelled inconsistently in a client’s document, he’ll go online and search until he finds the most common usage, and recommend that the client use it that way. And he’ll stick it in the style notes for the job. If the client wants to spell a word differently, that’ll go in the style notes as well. And the proofer will know that with client A he always uses “dingles,” but client B expects “Dingles” to always be capitalized.

In proofreading, like most things in life, there are no absolutes. But we come close when it comes to catching those pesky little errors that detract from a document’s polish.

- Su