“When we didn’t have a manual yet, when we didn’t know what to name the commands on our menus, when we needed our business cards spelled right, we couldn’t have done without you,” the boss said. “But now the product is in release, and I don’t see the ROI from fine-polishing the error messages.”
Read More“You know you guys are crazy?” said old Genady. “You tell one person that the way you write the material makes it right or wrong, but you ask another person to tell you whether it’s right or wrong before you’ve written it correctly and you’re angry that he tries to correct the writing.”
Read MoreYou try to write the example so that it reaches out a well-directed hand to the reader, and the reader grabs the example by the tail.
Read MoreWe learn what to do from the people who had trouble doing it. It was the Talmudic grouch Shammai who said “Receive all men with good cheer.” And it was Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, a writer wrestling with the ambiguities of Latin, who wrote “Take care not merely to make understanding possible, but to make misunderstanding utterly impossible.”
Read MoreMy Hebrew teacher back on the kibbutz, Rachel Spitzer, explained to us that Hebrew had one “why” word to ask about purpose and another one to ask about underlying cause. “Aha!” I thought, and I ran to the Internet — after a technical delay of thirty-five years — to check my theory that in English the same distinction properly separates “why” and “wherefore.” No such luck. No clean distinction in the King James Bible, and no clean distinction in the dictionary.
Read MoreSite for Israel's professional tech writing and marcom community. Originally based in what has become Israel's 2nd largest R&D center (Yokneam), Elephant brings together technical and marcom writers from all over Israel. Behind the scenes and between meetings, members stay in contact with job offers and leads, joint projects, and professional assistance.
Using the wrong technical writer is like using a wrench to open a door, it works, but a door knob is better and cheaper. Elephant was started to help match writers and copy editors with companies where their skills match company needs.
