Writing Assistance Newsrooom

by Whitney Potsus

Whether the documentation department has a staff of one or a team of 12, visibility within the company is a frequent concern. The reasons for this concern range from personal to professional. You want to be remembered when promotions and bonuses are handed out. You want new challenges to add diversity to your workload, and new projects to add skills to your resume. You want to defend your turf against budget cuts and layoffs during lean economic times. And you want to be more than an afterthought that lives in the back 40 of the cubicle farm.

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by Ruth Nickolich

What does it take to start your own technical-writing business? Chutzpa! Insanity! I began mine by getting a loan from my local bank for my first computer to set up a home office. It was a Micron desktop 386, the fastest computer in town! That was nine years ago. I now have a nice office, a sizeable staff, and all the work I can handle, most of the time.

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by Whitney Potsus

“Lone writers” — those people who work as their employer’s only staff writers — are a different breed, with their own unique set of professional and personal challenges. At the same time a blessing and a curse, the lone writer life offers flexibility, variety, and autonomy, along with feelings of stress, isolation, and burnout.

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by Kristen Giovanis

Companies operating in a global marketplace know they need to translate documents for their audiences. But some documents actually need more than translation – they need localization. Although a document’s words can be translated perfectly, the document can still be ineffective in another market, due to differences in the way local businesses operate and in the way people think.

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by Karen O’Keefe

Whether you’re a manager or not, consider the following checklist the next time an interview is about to commence. As an interviewee, these actions might give you a competitive edge. As an interviewer, they might help set your standards on how you rate potential candidates.

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