March 2013
1 post
3 tags
What Are You Trying to Say, Stairs?
Hey Team,
I work in an office, and while most of the cautionary whales use the elevators exclusively, I occassionally dabble in a hobby I call “Using the Fucking Stairs.”
What I don’t like dabbling in is madness:
Now, our stairwells have other signage as well. The classic “No Smoking”, and “DEAR GOD HOLD ONTO THE RAILING.” Now, those seem a little...
February 2013
1 post
7 Words that Came About from People Getting Them... →
Since I write a blog whose sole purpose is to cut down other people’s writing, it is often assumed that I believe that the English language has concrete rules that must be followed at all times.
Not so! There are times when poor grammar will better communicate your point. Start dropping too many whom-bombs and people stop listening.
The English language, and the guidelines surrounding...
January 2013
2 posts
4 tags
Launch Day means sitting and waiting for the fires...
Hey kids,
Today we launch the internal site we’ve been working on. There’s some weird talk about how we’ll “miss the old one.” No. No you will not:
I am so glad I didn’t help build that thing.
But I did help build this! And yeah, I still find fault with it.
As of now, there’s been no explosions. But man. There will be.
- Julia out
3 tags
November 2012
1 post
3 tags
The Gumbo Recipe (because recipes remain totally...
This is the recipe handed down to us from Kevin Conway many years ago. It has since been bastardized, permutated and resulted in the deaths of many defenseless animals.
Gumbo is not about finesse, exact measurements, or happiness. It is about pain.
It is also about having fun. One time we just put a whole fucking ham in the pot. One time I accidentally confused protein powder for flour. One time...
October 2012
1 post
2 tags
Government, Social Media is Not for You
I got a new gig! Excitement, yes?
We have this internal Facebook situation, which I am trawling for the first time today. I hilariously thought that it might be kinda useful. I’m the new guy! There’s gotta be interesting posts/articles about what we do here, right?
ERRONEOUS.
-Julia out
July 2012
1 post
May 2012
4 posts
2 tags
Julia's Goddamn Bacon Tart Recipe
Hey team,
This post isn’t super tech writey, but well, it’s a recipe, which are actually very tech writey. People ask me for this recipe all the time, to which I respond “Uh, well, it’s not…fuck.” And here we are.
The original recipe is from the LCBO’s Food and Drink Guide. I have changed it tremendously. Example: they wanted me to use 8 large spanish...
5 tags
This Cereal is the Work of the Morningstar
Eating healthy is a complete pain in my balls.
I have a friend who is always “up” on the newest health food/exercise trends.
Last summer, us boys were up at the cottage. Said friend says he has this super awesome new cereal. It’s made from spelt, which is a cousin to modern wheat, but hasn’t been modified to the point it’s a monster (see: corn).
I wander into the kitchen and see…this:
“Jesus...
4 tags
I Will Kill Your Sons, And Ravage Your Daughters:...
My contract is up in a week.
I do not enjoy unemployment. Two weeks off? Fuck yeah. Stay-cation. I’mma drink, and clean my house, and ride bikes. Unemployment is not a vacation. It is the POW camp of the ongoing genocidal war that is having a career. Sometimes it’s just boring, like being captured by the Vichy. Sometimes it’s fucking Dachau. People DIE out there, man.
...
4 tags
In Which It's Asia Month, and I Totally Lose my...
They finally did it. My place of work made it personal.
You may not know this, but I love East Asian shit. I don’t know why. I have a degree in East Asian History. It has in no way advanced my career, but it makes me … happy? Well, it doesn’t actively piss me off, anyway.
Now, for someone who purports to love ze Asians, it is hilarious that I did not know that May is Asia...
April 2012
5 posts
3 tags
4 tags
What? Thanks, Refrigerator Instructions →
3 tags
Yeah, We Have a Subreddit →
Hey kids,
About once a month I am reminded that there is a tech writing subreddit. It’s…sparsely attended, which I find a little surprising. Reddit is a friendly home to indoor folk looking to discuss esoterica.
The link above is from a new discussion:
“Entry-level technical writing jobs: Where do I start?” There’s only two replies last I checked, which is...
6 tags
In Which Dictionary.com Discusses the Greatest...
Dictionary.com is one of my favourite websites. Audio files which demonstrate how to properly pronounce words? (Fun fact: if you go to “tomato”, they give you BOTH pronunciations) Paragraphs explaining the YEAR when a word first started being used? LOVE.
Today, I stumbled across this:
Dord
Word Origin & History
1934, a ghost word printed in “Webster’s New...
March 2012
19 posts
3 tags
Spacing: It's Crucial
4 tags
8 tags
And Now We Have to Do THIS All Day: Tech Writing...
My other buddy (I have more than one!), Peter, works for a social media company in Toronto, ON. He just sent me the following message:
“My boss wants me to post social media facts on our twitter account, she sent me a link with some facts. I asked her if I needed to source those facts, she said, ‘Facts are facts, you don’t need to source them’.
FACTS ARE NOT JUST FACTS!...
4 tags
4 tags
Shout Outs: mrbryanflood
Shout out time! It’s always nice to be able to read something that DOESN’T make me completely furious.
My colleague, writing partner and PIC started a blog, which I guess I would have called The Tech Writing Sartorialist, but he went with mrbryanflood.
Two articles that made my Monday morning:
Denim and Desire Lines
” Essentially, the wash of the jeans becomes tailored to...
5 tags
In Which Internet Explorer Gets Between Me and My...
Hey kids. The following is a true story:
This morning, I decided to log into the Pay/Benefits module. I don’t get paid until Wednesday, but I take GREAT comfort in staring at my own money. Even if it only exist in potentia.
Because my work is run by crazy people, intranet stuff only works in IE. I can use Firefox for everything else. Whatever. Having to use IE7 is worth it, if I get to...
3 tags
7 tags
I am Not in Love with Your Dating Danger Plan
Happy Day-after-Ladies-Day Everybody!
A buddy of mine attended a feminist workshop thing yesterday, and came back, unsurprisingly, with a stack of literature. One was a little booklet thing about abusive relationships.
Now, abusive relationships are not fucking funny. It’s a serious problem, and I in no way pretend to have a solution.
But I can point out the various ways in which this pamphlet...
4 tags
In Which I Find My Soulmate
For funsies, I googled “tech writing fails” to see what would pop up.
A lot of it was my own blog, and links to technical writing manuals. But I found this blog post about IPV4 addresses:
http://snappeh.com/blog/ipv4-article-fail/
I…literally read it through twice and thought: “Wait. Did I write this? Did someone steal one of my rants?” I then went through my...
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a...”
– Oscar Wilde
2 tags
5 tags
Shout Outs: Gov + Memes Tumblr
As I constantly lament, I work for the government. <violins>
In a seminar today, I noticed that the presenter had the following Tumblr on his bookmarks toolbar:http://govplusmemes.tumblr.com/
It contains gems such as this:
You…don’t understand how many emails I get which are people emailing me my own file. I KNOW WHERE IT IS BECAUSE IT IS MINE. ALSO, IT’S ON THE...
6 tags
And Now We Have to Do THIS All Day: Tech Writing...
A buddy of mine is a proofreader at Lee Valley Tools in Ottawa. Today, he sent me this:
We just changed our quotation mark standard from straight quotes to curly quotes at work. You can’t search for quotation marks in our copy database. Guess who has to go through the 243-page hardware catalogue to find all of them?
I…salute you brother.
- Julia Out
2 tags
America's Most Surprising Six-Figure Jobs-Tech... →
MAKE MONAI MONAI MAKE MONAI MONAI.
-Julia out
techwriterninja:
2 tags
“Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est
(they can kill you, but...”
– Infinite Jest
6 tags
Don't Argue with the Velociraptors!
So, I live in Ottawa, Ontario, which is the capital of Canada. I work for the government. My office is downtown, right near Parliament. Whenever there is a protest/demonstration of ANY kind, we get the following form email from security. You’ll note that the email makes NO MENTION of what the protest is about. For funsies, I replaced every instance of “demonstrator” with...
3 tags
My Mother Does the Darndest Things
Alright. So this is the mess that is my mother’s computer:
Take a close look. Things you will notice:
Netscape 7.2 (no longer exists)
Every. Other. Browser. Is present.
Flash (she cannot use this)
Bitcomet (she cannot use this)
iTunes (does not own iPod)
Things you can’t see in this picture:
There were TWO virus scanners running. This made the computer think it had less than...
5 tags
2 tags
The Grammar Nazi Tumblr →
I was alerted to their presense earlier and for some insane reason didn’t:
a) give them props
b) marry them immediately
-Julia out
techwriterninja:
I love it, for reasons.
They don’t have an “ask” form, so I just have to sing their praises to the Tumblrverse.
February 2012
12 posts
In Which Clip-Art is the Bringer of Demise
Hello everyone! As requested, some more bad graphics.
Alright, so this visual HIV is from around 2000. It was part of a whole “Let’s improve government services to the public,” campaign. Now, the first step in fixing any problem is figuring out what/which part you need to fix. This graphic is supposed to explain to different government departments the process of fact-finding, brainstorming,...
4 tags
Public Service Announcement
Hey!
To my great embarrassment, I learned that my “submit” button wasn’t working! I know people aren’t, like, trying to submit in droves, but it’s pretty ridiculous for me to spend all this time ranting about other people’s shitty products when I can get my damn links to work.
So apologies! And thanks to Spiegro for letting me know!
-Julia out
5 tags
Kraft Canada Apparently Doesn't Know Who Won on...
Hello! I talk a lot about why the public service is preposterous, but today we get something different! We’re gonna take a look at Kraft peanut butter.
So, I bought some of their “all-natural” peanut butter, because it was on sale, and I wanted to try it out. It clearly has sugar in it. Possibly they grow some kind of peanut-sugarcane hybrid. Or maybe they just added fucking sugar.
Anyway, that...
3 tags
2 tags
Who's Your Daddy?
I haven’t really delved into researching this guy yet:
…but apparently, Joseph Chapline is considered to be the first Technical Writer. He worked for Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation from 1947-54. The first tech doc was about the BINAC computer and written in 1949.
He was also one of the founders of the freakin’ IEEE.
I’m trying to hunt around for examples of his...
3 tags
If you email me this, you are basically a...
Technical writing is one of those jobs that people:
don’t know is a thing and
don’t understand
Which is fine. I don’t know what astronauts do. Like, from 9-5. No idea.
Now, I totally get that people want to understand the world around them. There are very reasonable ways of doing this. For example, you could sit down with me, and within 15 minutes, you’ll know...
5 tags
The Difference between Technical Writing and the...
Sometimes tech writers compose marketing docs. These can be blog posts, or brochures, product names, slogans, whatever. And sometimes these things are created by marketing departments.
Your technical communication team wants to sell your product. They do. There’s no ethical problem in writing in a way that highlights the advantages of a product. But people often want marketing to deal with...
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“We would like you to manage our website. We’ve previously had a dream weaver to...”
– (via clientsfromhell)
I normally wouldn’t reblog Clients from Hell, because they are all beautiful, but this…this struck a chord with me.
5 tags
1993 Was Magic, Says Government of Canada
Hello everyone! I apologize for being away for so long.
Let’s go over this text/graphic example of how computers will change Government of Canada service standards, circa 1993. Now, I obviously understand how much technology has changed since 1993. The example here is talking about dial-up internet, etc. That is not a problem.
It’s everything else. Onward!
(The following is taken verbatim from:...
Spiegro: The Truth About Tech Writing →
notatechwriter:
First day at the nontechnical writing job. Guess what, I already miss technical writing. I debunked some myths today.
#1 Proofreading is more fun than tech writing. Wrong. Maybe grammar Nazis will disagree. I know a bunch of people who relish nonstop debates about comma…
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
December 2011
20 posts
5 tags
In Which Math is Used to Prove the Truth of...
Calendars are important. They ensure I do the things I’m supposed to do.
Everyone has a different calendar system. I use my Outlook at work, but push my Outlook to a Google Cal that has my personal stuff, which then just shows up on my iPhone. I check my iCal like religion.
I have a friend who uses a hard-copy agenda. And pens. It’s nuts. But he never misses an appointment. Since his system...
5 tags
2003: The Year Tech Writing Went to the Movies
Let’s go on an adventure, shall we?
The Technical Writer (2003)
Jessup (Michael Harris) is a 40-ish technical writer/hermit who leaves his basement hovel in a Manhattan high-rise only to accept takeout deliveries. But newly arrived, glitzy married tenants Slim (Tatum O’Neal) and Joe (William Forsythe) decide, for no obvious reason, to get him into their social circle —...
