When you work as a contract technical writer, you can maximize your productivity by choosing the tools that work best for you. These tools can vary widely depending on who your clients are and the type of work you're doing. And they change as technologies improve. Today I thought I'd share five applications I currently use every day.
1. Outlook 2010
Remember the days when you had a single email address? Maybe you're lucky enough that you still do, but most of us now have five or more email add...
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Confluence wiki – first impressions
As a technical writer, I love learning new tools. In this case, I'm implementing a pilot project using a Confluence wiki.
Until now, all our technical documents have been Word and CHM help files. And we've delivered these to our customers as links on a static web page.
This method made it easy for lots of folks to contribute to the documentation, but it also had a number of downsides. These were the things I wanted to address if we changed to a different system:
Global searching across...
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Tracking technical writing deliverables
Imagine you've accepted a technical writer position in a company that creates enterprise software. You're used to working with a team of writers, maybe even a documentation manager and editor.
Now it's just you. Project manager, writer, and editor. And 50 documents to keep up to date. How will you manage?
The nature of enterprise applications, is that they address the needs of organizations, managing resources, customer relationships, automated invoicing and billing, and business intellige...
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