Ancient Blogs

Writing god on papyrus

Egyptian writing god with hyroglyphic tweets

Meet the god of writing. I found him in the Cairo papyrus factory years ago.

I bring him to every new job site, where hits on my desk??as my personal?Technical Writer’s Muse.

See the small pictures around him? Each one contributes to his story. I consider these icons?Egyptian tweets.

Imagine if we in the 21st century could tweet with tiny icons.? No more character counting. Just pictures, hashtags and bit.ly links.
We’d probably register with?GoogleGlyphs to search for images that covey our thoughts.

Choosing fonts your client will see

Oh, No unlike icon

My Web Design instructor sent me this link when I asked why our lesson denigrated a font I like and use often.
http://www.johnnyflash.net/the-ten-most-overused-fonts-in-graphic-design

That article rules out the fonts frequently required by?corporate publications style guides, as well as two I love, Comic Sans and Papyrus.

Web designers use font families from the CSS Font Stack to ensure that the person who views your lovely web pages will see the look you intended. The Font Stack repository stores fonts guaranteed to be available, no matter what local machine or network carries your pages to a visitor. But the CSS Font Stack encourages use of all the fonts rejected by Johnny Flash as overused.
So, what do you do to make your site fonts both interesting and available to all visitors?

You can find many exciting, free fonts on the web, but will your web site visitor see those
fonts? If not, your visitor’s view reverts to whatever ho-hum font is the default in his or her environment.

You can select more  interesting fonts from Google fonts. Google gives you the JavaScript command to  paste in the <head> section of your web page code.

Sample Google fonts

Sample Google fonts

More on this subject if I find other font collections accompanied by web-viewing code.

If you have created a font, please add a post here describing your experience designing, creating and publishing that font.

I-ads –Introduce yourself to the world

You’ve got a business or a skill. You want to attract customers.? Yesterday’s paper ads (mail campaigns, magazine ads) have low ROI for you.

How do you attract today’s techno-savvy market?? Go where they gather:

  • Create your social media presence. Create a Facebook page. Ask folks to you so every post to your page appears on their timeline, where their friends see it.
  • Give your tweets a header
    twitterhead-150x150
  • Plant your brand on Google’s search pages. Learn how to use AdWords (adwords.google.com) to initiate an effective 1 or 2 line advertisement. Pay only when someone clicks through your ad to your site.
  • Create a lively, colorful, interactive blog. Feed it fresh material frequently. Invite others to interject their views.
  • Give stuff to your visitors- discount coupons,
  • My opinion only: Keep it simple. Don’t overcrowd your web site with too many words, pictures or navigation choices. Deliver a crisp, upbeat message; invite questions, knowledge, feedback.
  • Most important, have fun. People will want what you have that makes you?make you so happy.

So much to learn, so little time

I’m looking for a job. So I search Monster, Indeed, Dice and even Google for “Technical Writer” in various places where I might like to live.

The results return.
If I’m lucky, the jobs listed will actually be for technical writing in the area I searched for.
Too often I look for work in Florida only to receive hits in California, Washington state, Utah, Virginia or the Bronx. Today, careerbuilder.com returned “Regulatory Affairs Specialist” and “Mascot/Performer for Space Coast Credit Union.”

The list of returns contains some intriguing new directions, most of which concern writing for marketing? (called copywriting) rather than writing IT procedures, system requirements, or online help — the stuff I have churned out for 3 decades.

Today’s employers want short bursts of content  blogs, social media pages, tweets. Your potential employer wants content optimized to be found by search engines (google, bing). S/he wants you to integrate Google AdWords and format your wisdom in chunks that people can read on their smartphones.
I do not know how to write for this new audience. So I googled SEO and copywriting. Enter Elance University, myCopyblogger, Lynda.com and YouTube, all offering to teach you these new tricks for very little money in very little time.

I feel both deluged and excited to delve into these short courses then try applying what I learn to my own web presence. Here are some resources you might want to check out:
http://my.copyblogger.com/type/ebooks/
https://www.elance.com/q/university
http://www.lynda.com/
http://www.sessions.edu/certificate-programs/course-internet-marketing

Purpose

I have many years experience as a technical writer. In this blog, I hope to explore and share the new short-topic world of tweets and blogs.

I also want to peer into tools such as DITA and Madcap Flare. How do these differ from the good old tools we love– RoboHelp, raw XML, Dreamweaver (HTML/CSS) javaScript, etc.

Please join me on this journey. Your experience, insight and questions wanted.