Web site, web site or website? A quick poll.

25
Dec6

Time for a quick poll. Which is your preference?

  1. Web site (W in caps)
  2. web site (w in lower)
  3. website (w in lower and one word)

Respond with your preference and explanation, and I will compile the results.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.


Filed under: Just for fun, The Writing Life, Writing Tips
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More InfoPorn: Our new favorite site

21
Oct0

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love InfoPorn. This is what we consider the presentation of what could be considered dull information in interesting and fascinating presentations. Trust me, these are not your typical MS Excel bar charts.

The site Information is Beautiful seems to have it all for the infoporn addicted. Their latest, Left vs Right, explores, graphically, the differences between the left and right political parties.

Concerning their approach to presenting the information, this is what they have to say:

This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.

Their other posts include:

This site is worth checking out and following regularly. I know we will.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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Topless Celebrities Abducted by Aliens: Writing Killer Headlines

16
Aug0

If you clicked on this blog posting, I just proved that writing attention-getting headlines generate more interest than dull headlines that serve as nothing more than a title at the beginning of an article.Headless Body in Topless Bar

I have to admit that I am fascinated by the use of words in tabloid headlines. Oh, the power of words! One of my favorite attention-getting tabloid headlines is the 1982 classic from the New York Post announcing that a headless body had been found in a topless bar. Sometimes the headline is more interesting that the actual story.

Headline writing tips: Use as few words as possible to accurately describe the story. Think about action and and clarity. Reserve word play and catchy word sounds for tabloid stories. Although interesting and funny, these headlines work best in the tabloid press.

If you want to improve your headline writing skills, take the time to analyze newspaper headlines as well as the attention-getting tabloids. Heck, there’s nothing else to while standing in line at the grocery store. So you had might as well polish up on your writing skills.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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The First Tech Support Guy (video)

5
Aug0

Funny video of an earlier tech support person and a user manual. I thought I would share this because I really don’t think much has changed in the world of documentation usability.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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InfoPorn Gone Wild: When the Government Builds Scary Flowcharts

16
Jul0

In an earlier post, InfoPorn: Presenting raw data with visually stimulating graphs, I mentioned our interest in what we call InfoPorn. These are cool graphics that show somewhat mundane data in interesting ways. The basic concept is to take boring data and make it visually stimulating and interesting. So I was particularly struck by two flowcharts that were developed to show the complexity of the heath care system in the United States.

And now that we are hotly debating America’s health care crisis and need for reform, it didn’t take long for some scary InfoPorn to hit the streets. Time Magazine’s Swampland Blog has everything laid out nicely with their recent post, Health Care: Which Chart Scares You More?

House Minority Leader John Boehner issued this flowchart as an explanation of what we would face if the House Democrats plan passes. Obviously, he wants things to look scary and very complicated.

Boechner’s image:

boehnerchart

And not to be out done, Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic presented an interesting, and equally scary flowchart in his post, Rube Goldberg Already Lives Here, depicting how the American health care system currently works.

Cohn’s image:

cohn-chart

Thanks, gentlemen, for proving my point that looking at InfoPorn is a fun way to pass a lazy summer afternoon.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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How to stop confusing Me and I. Me and Billy will explain it to you

7
Jul0

Honestly, every time I hear “I” and “me” used incorrectly, I’m afraid my head is going to explode, or at least start spinning the way Linda Blair’s did in the movie, The Exorcist. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California.

The common mistake is that people frequently say something along the lines of, “Me and Billy went to the store.” WRONG, and believe me, making this mistake over and over makes you look pretty freakin’ stupid. I hear this mistake made every day by professionals who supposedly have an education.

So what’s wrong, you ask? Well, let me splain it to you in a way that might keep you from making this mistake again and again.

Warning: here’s the grammar lesson that so many people seemed to have missed

Rule No. 1:
When talking about you and others, list yourself AFTER everyone else. In other words, Billy, and anyone else you are listing, goes before “I” or “me.” Do you understand this? Simply stated, you go last. They taught us to let others go first in pre-school. Long before we ever started learning proper grammar.

Rules No. 2 through 4:
“I” is a nominative pronoun and is used as a subject of a sentence or clause, while “me” is an objective pronoun and used as an object. Yeah, I know this sounds complicated, so I’m going to give you some tips so you can forget the rules and simply break your sentence down so it sounds right. So the next time you tell a story about you and Billy going to the store, you can say it correctly.

Here’s my suggestion for understanding how it all works:

After you decide to start putting others before the “I” or “me,” you need to figure out if “I” or “me” is correct.

Tip: break the sentence apart to figure out which is correct.

Which sounds the most correct? I went to the store. Or? Me went to the store. If “I went to the store,” sounds more correct, you should say, “Billy and I went to the store.” Pretty simple, uh?

As the trouble with incorrectly using “me” in these sentences seems to originate when speakers are stringing together two or more objects in a sentence, breaking them into smaller pieces helps determine whether a nominative or objective pronoun should be used. “I” is not an objective case word, but people try to plug it in as an object because it just sounds smarter. So trying to make yourself sound smarter ain’t always going to make you right.

Now, take a look at these examples:

You might be tempted to say:
“Would you sell that to Billy and I?” WRONG

But then, when you omit the other object, you’ll have:
“Would you explain that to I?” WRONG

Now that just sounds silly. Try this:
“Would you explain that to John and me?” RIGHT
“Would you explain that to me?” RIGHT

Keep going with these examples:
Leave the decision to John and I. WRONG
Leave the decision to me. RIGHT
Leave the decision to John and me. RIGHT

Please join Bob and I for lunch. WRONG
Please join me for lunch. RIGHT
Please join Bob and me for lunch. RIGHT

So now do you understand which word to use? If you don’t, Billy and I are going to your house to explain it to you personally.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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Will Bing become the new Google? [Revised]

10
Jun1

As search engines go, Google has pretty much set the standards over the years. I remember first using Web Crawler, and then moving to Altavista, and then Yahoo!, until Google came along. So I am not set on one search engine over another. I just want the best that a search engine can offer me.

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I want it all is one location. I want to search for video and images on the same site I’m using for web searches. So is Bing going to bring it all together? From what I can tell after using Bing for less than a day, it looks as though it might just provide everything I need. But, I ask, is it really going to help me make decisions? I really think I can do that on my own, thank you. I just need a powerful search engine.

I plan to add to this post after I have more time with Bing and learn more about its power, or its hype.

Let me know what you think.

June 15, 2009 Update
Now that I have had a chance to use Bing for several days after the initial post, I wanted to give some feedback and further compare Bing with Google. I greatly question Microsoft’s sales pitch that Bing is not a search engine, but a Decision Engine. Say what? I’m thinking that it’s more of a “we direct you to where we want you to go engine.” Read that as, you will most likely go where Microsoft is getting its money.

Welcome pagebing
First, Google’s welcome page is simple and predictable. Bing, however, presents a new photo background on its default Explore page each day and provides links to more information that relates to the photo of the day. Frankly, I like the simplicity that Google offers. When it comes to a search engine. I want to search and not be presented with a random experience.

Setting Preferences
One of the first things you will want to do from the default page is to change your preferences from the Extras drop down menu. On the preferences page, you can change:

  • SafeSearch settings: sexual content controls go from Strict, Moderate to Off
  • Location
  • Display language
  • Number of results per page
  • Search suggestions: on or off
  • Search language

Photo search
This page opens with images relating to the default page’s photo and topic of the day. This is annoying. However, running your cursor over the image after your search for a topic will cause the image to enlarge and present more detailed information about the image, including file name, web site location, dimension and byte size.

Bing does conveniently allow for specializing and fine tuning your image searches with selection from a left-hand menu:

  • Size: small, medium, large or wallpaper
  • Layout: square, wide or tall
  • Color: color or black & white
  • Style: all, photograph or illustration
  • People: all, just faces, head & shoulders or other

Video search
With Bing, you get the feeling you are being force-feed TV shows and movies from Hula. But then again, searching for video clips is where Bing shines the most. It does present the offerings nicely and it is easy enough to search for video clips of your own choosing. One of the nicest features I’ve seen to date on Bing is the ability to run your cursor over the image of the video and run the clip directly on the search screen before opening it. This is convenient when you want to zip through video clips without needing to open them all.

Bing does conveniently allow for zeroing in on specific genre with selections on the left-hand site of the screen.

What is this Decision Engine they talk about?
The Decision Engine seems to be related to the shopping area of Bing. From what I can tell, it’s a way to do comparison shopping for things such as airline tickets. Sure, this is nice. But it doesn’t make Bing anything more than an over-hyped search engine.

Bottom line: Bing is a search engine with bells, whistles and a load of baggage I can live without. I’ll post more.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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NSFW question: are you more inclined to open a site if labeled NSFW?

21
May0

Be honest, if a site is labeled NSFW, are you tempted to lean forward a little to block your monitor from prying eyes and click on the link? Do these four letters that serve as a warning that a site is not safe for work make you want to take a peek–no matter what risk you might run by going there?

Come on, be honest!

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Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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