Before you build with us for the first time, you’ll need to add bbbmeetup.minehut.gg to your list of multiplayer servers in Minecraft:
1. Launch your Minecraft java client.
2. Click Multiplayer.
I’m excited to announce that I’ve added a new section to my website: Translations.
I’ll add samples of my translations from English to French.
I have lovely coworkers who would never comment on my French accent. And I have children. Children who make fun of me when I’m looking for 10th avenue: “Tense avenue? There’s no Tense avenue around here!” As a technical communicator, that’s not cutting it for me. My audience wants to use their brainpower to solve complex problems, not decrypt what I’m saying.
That’s why I look for ways to improve my pronunciation within the time constraints of a full-time working mom.
Over the years, various tools have helped me improve my pronunciation in complementary ways. Today, I’m sharing my findings with you. If I missed something, I want to hear about it!
Continue reading “5 techniques to improve your English pronunciation”If your subject matter experts or your audience are software engineers, using UML diagrams will help you communicate with them more effectively.
In this post, I briefly introduce UML, what technical writers gain from complementing their technical documentation with UML diagrams, and which UML diagrams I use the most.
If you work in software, I bet you’ve heard: “estimates are always wrong” or “we’re agile, we only estimate what we’re about to work on.” So why bother spending time and effort on estimations?
Here are five benefits of estimating your documentation projects, even when no one asked you.
Continue reading “5 reasons to estimate your documentation projects”
Have you ever had difficulty getting developers to document their code?
I work with all kinds of developers. While some of them are keen, talented writers, others won’t document without… convincing… that:
Continue reading “Why developers should write documentation”
I’m an ESL technical writer: English is my Second Language. It’s been a source of self-doubt when looking for a technical writer job in Vancouver, and it still is now that I am employed.
What was I thinking? Would hiring managers entrust me with their technical communication needs? Are my readers silently judging my English? Does it make me less of a technical writer?
Continue reading “Can you be a successful technical writer when English is your second language?”
How do you request interviews from subject matter experts?
I find that asking a subject matter expert (SME) for an interview is uncomfortable because I am asking them to carve time out of their regular duties, to work on a documentation project which isn’t their top priority. I’ve been looking for guidance on the web and in the literature, but only found email templates. Emails aren’t working in my situation: that’s not how we communicate internally in my organization, and they are way too easy to ignore.
I also don’t want to just send an email or calendar invitation and hope for the best.
I want to prepare the invitation to maximize the chance that the SME will:
Continue reading “How to request a subject matter expert interview”
The documentation brief is my secret weapon for delivering a document that meets the readers’ needs.
Technical writers set their documentation project up for success when they invest fifteen minutes to an hour understanding the documentation goals, securing resources, and setting realistic expectations before they start planning. In this post, I explain what the documentation brief is, and how it achieves these goals.
Continue reading “Set your project up for success with a documentation brief”The process I follow to create new documentation, from the time I start working on a new request, to the time I publish the final product, is a mix of what I’ve read in the literature, what I’ve learned from co-workers, and tweaks I have developed over time. In this post, I introduce it at a high level (I’ll call it my documentation process from now on, for short), and I’ll detail the exciting steps in subsequent posts.
Continue reading “How I write documentation”
Laure Mouillet 