Tag: Writing

An End to the Written Word

A reader asked the other day whether I thought that books (even e-books) would become outdated-that we would no longer need writing. A quick answer to that question would be no. However, the fact is that writing does serve a particular need. It allows for long term storage of thoughts and ideas so that they can be transmitted long distances, shared by those who don’t interact with the writer, and preserved for posterity. Writing is an old and established form of data storage. It actually replaced an even older data storage technique-the story teller.

Today there are many forms of data storage and writing is only one of them. In the digital age, unsurprisingly, the resources offered by Timescale and other providers is far more practical. From a convenience perspective, listening to someone tell you about something is easier than having to learn special symbols and then translate those symbols into spoken words in your head. The use of interactive graphics and demonstrations are far more revealing than translating a written procedure into movement by reading the words and then thinking about what you need to do in order to accomplish the tasks described by the words. For many people, hearing someone speak the words of Shakespeare will present not only the content, but the intonation required to actually understand the words at a deeper level. So, I do look for the written word to disappear from common use at some point (fortunately, not today).

However, even the best speaking, graphical presentation, and animation in the world aren’t up to the task of presenting most abstract ideas. An equation requires the use of symbols to represent the various concepts declared, defined, and solved by the equation. The symbols need not represent anything in the real world. Scientists will continue to require some level of writing to discuss, store, and implement abstract ideas. The presentation of these symbols need not be on paper (in fact, it probably won’t be on paper), but it will be writing nonetheless.

The tone of the conversation was such that I knew the reader was actually wondering whether I thought I might someday be out of a job. Writing is simply a tool that authors use to store ideas. Whether the author uses words or some other means of presenting ideas is immaterial, the ideas remain. It may very well be that I’ll eventually resort to other methods to present the ideas that form in my thoughts and that the creative expression of those ideas will take a different form. I don’t see myself as losing an occupation, but of having methods that my predecessors could only dream about to interact with my readers.

In short, it appears to me that eventually not everyone will know how to write because other forms of information exchange will become easier and more flexible. Some people already do all of their banking without writing anything-many other tasks will follow suit. Tomorrow, writing may not even be a part of the curriculum in grade schools. Students will learn some form of symbolic presentation in college as part of their professional courses and only professionals will use writing at all. However, I don’t see writing ever going away completely. Let me know your thoughts about the written word at [email protected].

 

Management Lessons from the Military

Having spent 10 years in the Navy, I know that military life can provide some benefits that translate well into civilian life. Enforced discipline, often described as training, does create an environment in which you can learn how to perform tasks more efficiently and with greater success. The training isn’t always comfortable, but the feeling of success when the training is over is always amazing. That’s why I went through the Ten Workplace Lessons From the Military slideshow on Baseline with great interest. It actually does help you understand how someone who has had military training can provide significant benefit to an organization of any sort.

From a personal perspective, I credit my military training with giving me drive and ambition required to write books and to also work through many of the issues in self-sufficiency that I have. The techniques that I learned in the service have translated well into creating an environment where I can work productively and ensure good results. The organizational and planning skills I gained in the service still serve me well today. I’m not saying that I succeed every time—far from it, but I have learned to keep trying until I find a way to succeed.

My service was quite some time ago, so I can’t speak to the training that the military receives today with any authority. However, judging from the content of the slideshow, I’d say that the military still values the kinds of things that helped me become the sort of person I did after I left the service. Things like learning to see what is important in a list of to do items, and what isn’t, is part of the military way of doing things. You never have enough time to complete a to do list in the service—prioritizing is a must.

The main reason I’m writing this post today is to support my fellow veterans. When you hire a vet, you’re getting someone with a broad range of experiences that you simply can’t get outside of the military. You get someone who had the drive to complete tasks under fire and will certainly have the same drive to complete tasks for your organization. Let me know your thoughts on the military method of management at [email protected].

 

Handling Printed Output in a Colorful World

There is an issue that most writers encounter when creating art for a book, but which readers seldom think about. Everything you use on a computer includes color, yet most books (especially technical books) are printed in black and white due to the prohibitive costs of printing them in color. Even many e-books use black and white images because the publisher typesets the document that way. Fortunately, e-book output is changing and you can get color images in them now, but the problem for the author is still there and will be there for quite some time to come.

Translating a colorful world into something that prints well is hard. Most publishers have strict guidelines on configuring a system to produce optimal printed output. Even though the output is optimal, the resulting system display seldom looks like anything you’d use on a regular basis. Even font smoothing is discouraged because it causes problems in the printed output. So, as a starting point, you need to understand that the plain image you see in the book is plain in order to make it easier to print.

Still, even with all of the settings that publishers require and authors invoke, the computer display is still ablaze with colors—some of which won’t print well and some of which will blend into each other. These two problems aren’t apparent at times until the book comes out in print. Putting sky blue next to buttercup yellow works just fine when viewing them in your browser, but they don’t print well. Assuming that the two colors print at all, they’ll be exceptionally light and will tend to blend in a way that makes it impossible to tell one from the other in the book. So, color choice becomes problematic for the author trying to seek a balance between what looks good in the real world and what looks good in a book.

It’s important to remember that books are printed in only two colors: black and white. Gradients of color, grayscale, are simulated by varying the dot density in a particular area of the book so that it appears the colors are either lighter or darker. The best an author can hope to achieve in simulating this environment is to employ a screen capture program that can also create grayscale output. In fact, that’s one of the tasks I perform as part of writing a book. Here’s a color version of one image I added to a recent book.

9781118441428FG1005

As part of the writing process, I converted the image to grayscale to see how it would appear in the book. Here is the grayscale version:

9781118441428FG1005Grayscale

The grayscale version isn’t nearly as pretty, but it does work. You can see all of the details on the page. Of course, it won’t look precisely like this in the book, but the grayscale version does help me visualize an approximation of the image appearance.

As more publishers begin to use color in their e-books and you begin to employ it to dress up your examples in book, you also need to consider special needs requirements. With this in mind, I also check all of the images in my book with VisCheck, a color blindness simulator, to ensure that readers who have special visual needs can work with the book without problem. Colorblindness (or more precisely, color shifting) causes some people to see colors incorrectly (often blended) even though they appear quite different to someone with normal color vision, so ensuring the colors work for someone with colorblindness is also important to the author.

Every graphic you include in a book is important and readers need to see them well. It may seem like a lot of bother to perform checks like those that I employ, but from the reader’s perspective, the time is well spent. Let me know your thoughts about working with color in books at [email protected].

 

A New Emphasis On Libraries

I’ve been talking with a friend about libraries recently. He had noted that the only people he had seen using libraries lately were older; that children had no desire whatsoever to even enter a library. Of course, this bodes ill for the institution because the youth of today will be the supporters of libraries tomorrow. However, his observations don’t match my own. Our local libraries seem to be packed with children. In fact, I saw three children standing outside our local library the other day while waiting for the doors to open. The difference in these two observations has me quite curious.

The way in which people use libraries has always interested me because these public warehouses of knowledge are essential to a functioning society. People require some method of accessing exotic or expensive texts—especially people who have limited means. The way in which libraries present information to the public will change in the future, but I have no doubt they will remain. In fact, I’ve touched on this topic before in my “Future of Libraries?” post. Before a future kind of library can take shape, however, the children of today must be engaged in the materials that a library can provide and see these materials as useful.

The two of us are still discussing the topic of libraries because the differences in our observations provide good fodder for discourse on the topic. My thought is that the differences in our observations could come from a number of sources:

 

  • A difference in the community (small town versus large city)
  • Differences in the society (such as, beach community versus Midwest farming community)
  • Times of observation
  • Motivation level of the librarians manning the library
  • Perceived value of the library’s content


Our local library is blessed with a great librarian and strong support from volunteers who truly care that we have a library. For example, we actually host events at our library to get people engaged and to enter the building so they can see what the library has to offer. The state has also been running ads to help support the local libraries and those ads may be boosting the number of people the library sees. Whatever the difference, I’m truly happy to see children waiting for the doors to open at our community library.

Of course, I always want to hear your opinion. What level of participation do you see at your local library? Who goes there and what seems to interest them most? What do you see as factors that affect participation in your local library? Let me know your thoughts at [email protected]

 

No, I Don’t Know Everything

A reader was taken aback the other day when I uttered the words, “I don’t know.” Three little words (actually four, since one of them is a contraction) seemed to send this poor soul reeling. As an author, I often need to utter those words because it’s a fact that I truly don’t know everything. If I did, life would be boring because there would be no challenge. Looking at the situation logically, there isn’t any way for me to read the daily output of millions of computer scientists—it’s physically impossible. Comprehending and remembering all that output would be a gargantuan task inconceivable in its execution. Keeping up with a modicum of that output is still an immense undertaking, but one I do with joy and a desire to know more.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a societal enmity toward those words. For a professional to utter, “I don’t know” seems to diminish the professional’s stature both with peers and those the professional serves. We expect our professionals to have answers (the correct ones) at all times, which is clearly unattainable. Yet, uttering those words requires courage and someone uttering them should be admired for being truthful, at least.

Of course, uttering the words and doing something about the utterance are two different situations. Generally, after uttering the phrase, I feel obliged to do something about it, assuming that the question is within my purview of interests (which range widely). Most professionals, curiosity piqued, will delve into the abyss and come back with an answer after some period of study. However, by that time the questioner has often pursued other interests, leaving the professional to wonder whether the question really was important.

The answer is always important, if for no other reason than the professional has added new knowledge and opened new avenues of intellectual exploration. Even so, a little patience on the part of the questioner would have been nice. Any voyage of discovery takes time, no matter how mundane the trip might appear at first. In fact, many of my most memorable discoveries came as the result of a seemingly routine question on the part of a reader.

When I utter the words, “I don’t know” to you as a reader, it doesn’t mean I lack experience or knowledge—it simply means that I haven’t yet explored the area of information you desire. In many cases, I’ll take time at some point to explore the area and present you with my opinion on it, but you’ll have to be patient until I’m able to discover the answer for you. In the meantime, it’s my hope that you’ll continue to ask questions that cause me to utter, “I don’t know.”

 

Spring Change

Nature casts off her winter garb,
pure white ermine,
soft and plain.

Showers in renewing,
springtime rains,
begin afresh once again.

Breezes blow her dry once more,
sweeps the old
clean away.

Sunshine comes,
to give her warmth,
makes her children frolic and play.

Puts on a new,
frock of green,
fragrant, musty, earthy hue.

Displays her jewels,
of flowery delights,
red and yellow, orange and blue.

Springtime’s promise,
of more to come,
brings to mind summer’s fun.

For now we’ll see,
her labors great,
winter’s gone, spring has won.

Copyright 2013, John Paul Mueller

 

The Effects of Using Terminology Incorrectly

I read an interesting article the other day by Lorinda Brandon entitled, “When Buzzwords and Jargon Backfire.” The actual article is about the relevance of terms when applied to APIs. However, in a larger sense, the author of the article is spot on in decrying a situation that has continued to occur as long as I’ve been writing (quite a while). People who are involved in an industry, but don’t necessarily understand it completely, misapply terminology related to that industry in a way that causes the terms to lose meaning and focus. In this particular case, the author begs people using certain terminology to explain precisely what they mean and how the resulting infrastructure will benefit the people using it. This is a valid request and one I hope the article’s readers will respect.

However, the article brings to mind far more serious misuses of terminology. Many people still don’t understand the difference between a hacker (someone who understands and uses technology at a low level to perform useful and usually positive tasks) and a cracker (someone who uses technology, not necessarily at a low level, to break into systems and cause other forms of mischief). As an author who really does care about the misuse of terminology, I often try to explain the difference, but as someone astutely pointed out, I’m probably bailing a sinking boat that has a rather large hole in the bottom. In some cases, the terminology is used incorrectly for so long that it acquires a new meaning. Of course, languages change as does every other living thing, so growth in the form of existing words with new meanings and the addition of entirely new words is both expected and encouraged. Someday I may actually give up trying to distinguish between hacker and cracker (but it won’t be today).

However, misusing technical terms doesn’t simply affect the growth of our language. Unfortunately, misusing terms can lead to all sorts of negative consequences—some dire. Imagine that someone has made claims for a particular technology and misused terminology to do so. You may obtain the technology with certain expectations based on the precise definition of the terminology, but only later find that the technology doesn’t address the need at all. What if that technology is used in the health care industry or as part of heavy construction? The misuse of terminology through ignorance or (worse yet) to sell product isn’t acceptable. In most cases, materials written by less skilled authors should be vetted by those who have a firm grasp of the required terminology before the material is released to the public to avoid misinterpretation. It’s a simple, yet effective, means of retaining the meaning of special words.

When writing documents of any sort, keeping a dictionary close at hand and consulting with others who understand terminology at a precise level is always a good idea. It may surprise you to know that I still use these two techniques to ensure my writing is as accurate as possible. I don’t always succeed and you can be certain that some readers will take me to task for my mistakes. Unlike many authors, I do try to clear up these misunderstandings through my blog posts (which I hope that you read). What terminology do you find most confusing? Which terms do you wish others would use with greater precision? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Defining the Benefits of Failure

In a society that values success above anything else, it seems a bit odd to talk about one’s failures as being beneficial. Even so, failure is beneficial because it helps define what is possible and what is not. Failure helps shape the expectations of those who experience and use it in a positive way to produce a better result the next time. In fact, failure is the greatest teacher of all and something to be embraced rather than shunned. Of course, this sounds quite counterintuitive and perhaps even a bit bizarre, but it’s a fact. All true success comes through a path strewn with failure.

When you consider the role of a technical writer, part of that role is to fail. Readers pay me to play with various technologies—to try to perform various tasks using a variety of techniques. When I find something that works, it’s time to put it into words that the reader can understand and absorb quickly. Failures almost never appear in books except in the form of Notes, Tips, and Warnings (just in case you wondering about the sources of those bits of text). A technical writer fails until a success is achieved and then documents the success so the reader need not fail. So, when you think about it, at least part of the requirement for my occupation is the ability to fail gracefully and to keep trying until a success is achieved.

Failure has even shaped my writing and the techniques employed to produce useful books. Previous posts such as, Methods of Learning and Developing the Reader Profile, are based on failures to communicate in my earliest books. Discovering these techniques and how to apply them specifically to computer texts is an example of failure applied to produce a positive result. Of course, my technique continually evolves as I learn more through my failures.

There are many professions where failure is essential, even mandatory. For example, scientists fail constantly. In fact, Thomas Edison is reputed to have failed around 1,000 times when inventing the lightbulb. Of course, Edison turned the whole idea of failure around and simply stated that he had found 1,000 ways not to make a lightbulb. Even so, he failed. However, it’s important not to miss the significance of the failures. People actually paid Edison to fail when you think about it. They realized that he had the expertise required to eventually succeed and that the failures were simply the road to that success. The people who believed in Edison took his failures in stride, much as the man himself did.

It may surprise you to discover that many of the greatest people in history were equally robust in their failures. Abraham Lincoln is often viewed as our greatest president, and for good reason, his record speaks for itself. Yet, his record is replete with an astonishing number of failures. Viewing the record and then viewing the man makes you wonder whether Lincoln would have ultimately succeeded without that incredible list of failures.

Marie Curie also experienced more than a few failures, yet everyone knows about her because of the successes garnered after working incredibly hard to overcome obstacles that would send most people reeling. Without her work, we might not have many of the medical and other scientific advances we take for granted today. It was failure that shaped Curie, but we focus on the end of the path—the ultimate success of her experiments.

The list of famous failures goes on and I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of that list in this post. The point is that failure, not success, is the teacher of us all. Success is simply the conclusion to any particular course of education by failure. Because of my unique view of failure, it concerns me that our society has taken a course that values success over failure and uses every method possible to avoid it. Our children are taught that they’ll succeed no matter what, that failure is best avoided. The overemphasis on success to avoid the potential pain of failure is seriously hurting everyone and reduces the chance of success in the future. Failure, discover it—embrace it. What is your view of failure. Let me know at [email protected].

 

Piracy and the Reader

There are many articles written about the effects of piracy—the stealing of intellectual property—on artists and the businesses that work with them. The situation has gotten so out of hand that some people don’t even realize they’re stealing anything. I’ve talked with any number of people who admit to using a free copy of one of my books. When I point out that neither my publisher nor I have issued free copies of anything, they look a bit surprised. After all, why would Joe or Sally give them stolen property, or why would a Web site say material is free when it actually isn’t? It’s human nature to attempt to get everything for the lowest possible price, with free being the best price of all. Some people even think it’s simply wrong to pay for intellectual material; that it should be freely available to everyone. The reason products such as books have been successful so far is that the source of the material has been controlled through the use of paper media. The Internet has changed all that. As described in “Authors and Book Piracy” the losses from piracy to content owners are immense—on the order of $58 billion every year.

I was recently pointed to an article entitled, “The Slow Death of the American Author” by several people. In this case, we’re not talking about outright theft of intellectual property. The party in question is importing foreign copies of books and reselling them to students over eBay at a reduced cost. Foreign editions of books often sell for less for simple reasons, such as the use of lower quality materials and sweat shop labor. In some cases, it boils down to the domestic publisher not having a presence in that country and making a deal with a publisher in another country to distribute the book there at a reduced cost in order to make the book more widely available, but with the limitation that distribution will be kept to that country. There are also situations where a foreign entity has simply stolen the book content and printed copies without paying anyone. The point is that these foreign editions usually end up putting little or no money in the pocket of the author that produced the work and the author is already hard pressed to earn a living from domestic sales.

These and other stories simply point out what we have all known for a long time—eventually it will become impossible for artists of all stripes, including authors of technical books, to make a living through the expression of their artistic skill given the current environment. Of course, I’ll continue to write, as will many other people, but what does this change in the business environment really mean to the reader? No one has really thought about it. At least, I haven’t read any articles by anyone who has contemplated what happens to the people who consume intellectual property as part of their daily lives when the quantity or quality of that material is reduced because the practitioner of the required art must do something different in order to eat.

For some artists, such as musicians, it means a change in business plan. Many more musicians look to concerts or other activities to make a living today given that their recorded music earnings have dropped dramatically. A few artists, such as painters and sculptors, are pretty much unaffected by digital media and will continue working as before. However, for authors such as myself, it may mean a change in occupation. My technical writing could go from something I do for a living to something I do for pleasure when I have leisure time (which probably won’t be very often). There will likely be people who will continue to have leisure time to write, but the overall effect of piracy will be a reduction in both quality and quantity of material available to readers in technical fields. Technical writing pays poorly. The people who actually have the knowledge required to do a good job usually have far better things to do with their time than to write material that someone else will simply steal.

I’m actually looking at a number of ways to stay in business—much as smart musicians have done. What will likely occur in my case is that I’ll find a new way to present my ideas in a form that isn’t quite so easy to pirate or uses piracy in some way to actually earn money. You may see my site filled with ads, for example, or I may put a stronger emphasis on new ways of presenting information, such as interactive books. The idea is that I’m looking for ways to get around the whole issue of piracy because I know there is no way to put the genie back into the bottle at this point and no amount of legislation will cause people to change their basic nature. However, I do appreciate any support you can provide in the meantime through the purchase of my books from locations such as Amazon and by not sharing your digital copies with others.

Of course, I’m always looking for your input. If you have read my blog for a while, you know that I’m in this business because I genuinely enjoy helping others, so it’s important to me to continue serving your needs in whatever way I can. I have already received a few interesting ideas from readers on how to turn this whole situation around, but I can always use more. Given that the publishing industry is slowly dying and that I must somehow continue to pay my bills, how would you approach the problem? Let me know your ideas at [email protected].

 

Procedures in Technical Writing

A great technical book contains all sorts of content types because different readers learn in various ways. If everyone learned in the same way, technical books would be easier to write, albeit, a bit boring. Procedures are part of the hands-on content that turns a “how” book into a “how to” book. A how book simply shows how something is done. For example, you might see a coding example that shows how to perform a technique. However, unless you actually work with that technique, it’s unlikely that you’ll truly grasp the methodology behind it.

Writing good procedures that actually work is hard. I think the point was driven home to me at an early age by a teacher who seemed to have way too much fun in class. I learned quite a bit from her simply because she made learning fun. When it came time to write a procedure, she chose making toast, which seems to be a typical example. However, when it came time to check our procedure, we each handed our papers to another student who read them aloud while the instructor performed the steps precisely as written. Many of us forgot to mention taking the bread out of the wrapper, so she’d politely try to stuff the pieces, wrapping and all, into the toaster. It was a hoot, but also a great lesson.

All authors have an issue with assuming that the person viewing the procedure knows something that doesn’t appear in the write-up. The person ends up trying to stuff the bread into the toaster without taking it out of the wrapper first. Even though the example was quite humorous in that teacher’s classroom, in real life the omission of important material is frustrating for everyone because the author truly doesn’t understand why the reader is having a problem with the procedure. I’ve gone through the process myself—many times. As I’ve matured as an author, I’ve come to realize that I need to draw the answer to the problem with my procedure out of the reader without getting the reader any more frustrated than he or she is at the moment.

Good procedures, like good newspaper articles, answer who, what, where, when, why, and how. Even that requirement seems counterintuitive. Most authors seem quite pleased when they can accomplish the “how” part of the equation. The who part of the equation is often the hardest part of the procedure. Who is performing the task? It seems like an easy question to answer, but often I need to go back through a procedure and decide who is doing what and at what time. Doing something at the wrong time is often just as bad as not doing it at all. The question of where comes into play because modern computer systems have applications that interact with each other. Deciding where the person performing the procedure is at any given moment is essential to making the procedure work as expected.

Of all the questions though, the question of why is the easiest to answer, yet the most often missed. If a person does something like an automaton, there is no feeling of accomplishment—no sense of gratification. The reader goes through the motions without understanding anything about the procedure. As a result, the information doesn’t sink in and the reader is reduced to using the procedure precisely as written to perform only the task the procedure is designed to address. The best procedures answer the question of why so that the reader can use the procedure in various ways to address a wide range of problems that the author hadn’t even considered when writing the procedure.

Procedures are important. As a hands-on tool for interacting with the user, procedures present the opportunity for the author to extend the meaningful use of a book well beyond its intended purpose. An author truly can’t aspire to do more than that! Let me know your thoughts on writing procedures at [email protected].