Standing in the Shadows

TRAI or Trai?

2012-01-20T17:01:00.001+05:30

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is India's official agency entrusted with the task of creating and nurturing conditions for growth of telecommunications in the country. So, why can't newspapers in India agree on using TRAI, instead of Trai?

Trai suggests 20 cr fee for unified licence, screams Times of India. TRAI proposes Rs.20 crore for national level unified licence, says The Hindu newspaper. "One of the main objectives of TRAI is to provide a fair and transparent policy environment which promotes a level playing field and facilitates fair competition," says the official website.

So why Trai? People can view TRAI as an acronym or an initialism. But can these media biggies tell the readers why they prefer one form or the other?

December Noise

2012-01-04T09:58:00.010+05:30

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lamented the other day that Indian science lagged China and promised increased GDP outlay for science and R&D.
When every child is brainwashed to become an enginner, doctor, or software engineer, and then settle "abroad" earning crores, who wants to be a scientist in poor and undeveloped India? Also, the establishment and the media still consider "satellite launches and Solar Eclipse" as the biggest science stories of the day!

"There is not only an absence of big ideas backed by political conviction, but there is also an intellectual vacuity," says an editorial piece in D eccan Herald.
It is not just in politics, in all spheres of Indian life there is a big hole. All we are bothered is how much skin has an actor displayed on our websites.Our media is hell bent to ensure we also have beauties who can expose just like Western beauties. Just like that!

Cannot help from saying that this is an excellent intro: "...a buyer is acquiring stake from a seller, largely using money lent by the seller, even as he benefits massively from an announcement-led boost in share price..." The headline is even better, Funded by RIL Trust, Network18 buys ETV channels — from RIL.
It will be interesting to watch these news channels from now on.
Bangalore police prove poor investigators with a dismal conviction rate of 12%
I don't think there would be many who might have thought otherwise. If the police take the same effort they employ to block traffic and clear the roads for VIP movement, Bangalore could have been a better place.

What I listened to in 2011

2011-12-30T19:21:00.044+05:30

I was mostly listening to 80s and 90s style heavy metal in 2011 more than anything else. In the last two months I was listening to songs from Malmsteen's Trilogy, Poison's Greatest Hits, more of Guns 'N Roses, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Dokken, Faith No More, and less of Satriani and Steve Vai. Apart from these classics, I did check out some of the new bands like Vains of Jenna, and Crazy Lixx. Throw in a bit of Velvet Revolver, one or two songs of Saving Abel, Deep Purple (Slaves and Masters), Keel, 2011 was damn headbanging stuff.

1. You Don't Rememeber - Malmsteen

2. Blame It On Love - Crazy Lixx

3. Look in Her Eyes - Vince Neil

4. Bloodstreets - RIOT

5. Kill the King - Masters of Reality

December 2011

2011-12-17T18:45:00.012+05:30

The last one month has been the month of Mullaperiyar, a dam in the Idukki district of Kerala. Keralites, especially the politicians, are sure that frequent earthquakes will break the dam and kill lakhs of people. Tamil Nadu is sure that nothing will happen as the water will "simply" flow to the Idukki dam and rest there. Era of disaster porn and empty jingoism.

Indians will wake up in New Year to the amended Lokpal bill which will "undoubtedly make India the only place in the planet with zero corruption. Just like Kareena Kapoor's size zero. No soul in India will dare to be corrupt because of Lokpal. Just say the word, Lokpal; the corrupter will shudder and pee in public.

Religious rules sometimes create trouble for certain self-styled intellectuals. Rules are rules.

I cannot agree more with fashion designer Julie Kagti's remarks that fashion in Bangalore is getting more influenced by Bollywod. In a city where everybody on M G Road, Brigade Road, or Commercial Street is never free from fashion, the onlookers have simply a good time. These places are just ramps for the fashionistas. Even not dressing properly is a fashion in Bangalore. It is just a matter of how easily, blindly, or intelligently one apes either Bollywood or Hollywood. People spend more time in unisex salons on weekends than sleeping at home. You are nothing, if you have not gone to a unisex salon. At least once. That is it.

A pretty girl I saw in a lift in office wanted to spend the New Year Eve in Goa, and not in her house. Her male friend was advising and was feeling nostalgic about how beautiful the beaches were. She must read this article by our eternally correct journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai.

As the evening gets uncomfortably chilly in Bangalore, the Sri Lankan cricket team lurches to defeat against the South African pace attack led by Vernon Philander on a green pitch. Indian should watch out as everybody in Australia would love to see India lose.

I could not stop headbanging as I stumbled upon one of the heavy metal classics from the 90s by Ministry. Fans of Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein have much to reconsider. A great song to jam, practice, and sing at concerts. Also checked out Bathory's One Rode to Asa Bay.

Vidya Balan was one of the actresses I felt would use her brains rathr than beauty. But as we celebrate the age of porn and sleaze, her movie The Dirty Picture provides lots of eye candy. We must also acknowledge and thank the media for their steadfast campaigns for promoting porn and sleaze and creating vapid breaking news of of actresses like Veena Mallik.

Are outbreaks of Dengue and Chikungunya in Kerala just a garbage issue?

2011-09-27T11:07:00.003+05:30

Whenever the state of Kerala reports an outbreak of vector-borne diseases like Dengue and Chikungunya, the media goes on an overdrive and as usual looks for culpable scapegoats. Following public, political, and media pressure, on September 24, 2011, the Kerala chief minister held an emergency meeting and directed waste management measures on a war footing among others.

Here comes my discomfort. It may be because I am ignorant. Vector-borne diseases and contagious diseases are different ball games. What we are witnessing in Kerala is outbreaks of vector-borne diseases such as Dengue and Chikungunya, and the state’s total failure to either control, anticipate, or study the issue at hand. Knee-jerk reactions like more doctors in affected areas, urgent waste disposal measures, and local body meetings (a group totally incapable of dealing with the situation) follow suit from various quarters, and for the media this is just an issue to up the TRP ratings.

This is simply not a “Garbage Issue”. This is a serious environmental and entomological issue resulting from deforestation, land use changes, and possible jumping of microbes from forests or animals to human habitations, and population movement.

And the most important fact is that the humid and hot climate of Kerala along with the presence of thick vegetation (including plantations and stagnant water (ponds) near households provide the best conditions for the disease causing Aedes mosquitoes to breed. Mosquitoes cannot ask for a much better environment to breed and create havoc than the present situation in Kerala.

Moreover, there are reports and studies saying that “concurrent infections” can occur-this means the mosquito bites can cause both Dengue and Chikungunya. This means that a mosquito and a human being can be infected with more than one disease. This also means that in an ill-equipped medical hospital and clinic what can be the diagnosis, treatement, recording of symptoms.

While garbage and solid waste need to be removed and safely disposed of, this is not a measure that should be taken during vector-borne disease outbreaks. Waste disposal does not become critical when there is a medical emergency or when there is an epidemic like situation. But controlling vector-borne diseaes goes beyond waste disposal as it requires long-term studies and monitoring of existing infectious diseases and vectors and emerging threats. I feel each of these episodes are not the final ones and lack of scientific vision will lead to a big epidemic sooner or later.

The media does not have the same level of knowledge it has when it comes to reporting political breaking news, backroom intrigues, and cinema. They have no idea about the difference between the terms, contagious diseases and vector-borne diseases. According to one definition:

Contagious means infectious by direct contact, but in common usage the word usually applies to diseases that are highly infectious and dangerous, implying something more serious than a common cold.

Vector-borne diseases require a pathogen, a vector, and the human host. Here the pathogen is the virus and the vector is the mosquito.

So, were sitting on a medical volcano and believing that if there is no garbage and household waste, there will no diseases. How naive have we become!

FACTSHEET

Dengue Virus: Dengue is a viral infection caused by Flaviviruses, a group of viruses that can cause a number of diseases such as Dengue and Hepatitis C in humans. These viruses arev spread by mosquitoes and ticks and can reproduce in their vector. Click here to know more about the Dengue hemorrhagic fever .

Chikungunya: Chikungunya is caused by Alphaviruses and is spread by mosquitoes. It has the distinction of having jumped from monkeys to humans.

Heavy metal is alive and kickin' real hard

2011-09-24T22:42:00.010+05:30

While metal has disappeared from prime time music television, the cyberspace has hundreds of unheard, rare, and new bands rocking real hard. Some of the new bands are pretty good playing a style that critics may say retro. But the songs of some of these new bands are good and much much better than the two-chord alternative stuff that channels bombard you with. The following bands and songs, a mix of new and old, are real gems.

Talon's All I Ever Needed is a great straight-edged mid tempo/melodic song with good guitar solos and pure vocals from Chandler Mogul. The songs make me feel that I have missed this band. Talon rose from the ashes of Voxen, says Melodic Rock, and invites fans of Dokken (my favourite) and Hericane Alice to lend their ears. Both are very good bands.

Melodic death metal band Evergrey is another great find with powerful melodic songs with classic guitar solos.Click here to listen to A Touch of Blessing. The vocals at times resembled the good old MSG.

I am big fan of Crazy Lixx'z Blame it on Love from their album New Religion. This melodic song has a unique passion and the harmonies perfect like the classic acts that rocked the 80s. One of the best new bands with that hard rock/heavy metal sound that takes the listener 20 years back.

I cannot forget Michael Monroe’s 80s hit, Dead, Jail or Rock n' Roll, a superb butt-kicking metal song from their Not Fakin' It album. Wikipedia says that the song video featured GNR frontman Axl Rose. What a song and what a musician! I remember watching with friends the video featured in Headbangers Ball when VHS tapes ruled the roost and months before I had the luck to listen to Appetite for Destruction. Yes, we missed to spot Axl Rose.

Riot was the most underrated band and had some exceptional power metal and melodic metal songs and albums. Listen to Riot - Buried Alive (Tell Tale Heart). What a great song and what a great band.

Finally two great power ballads from Y&T and Great White. Keep rockin'.

Enraptured by mistakes?

2011-09-24T10:26:00.002+05:30

I was enraptured, in a sadistic way, by the editorial imperfections in this "environmental jourmalism" published by The Hindu daily. In its Kerala edition, the story, Study observes 30 species of raptors in Wayanad, contains a few mistakes that can attributted to either lazy subbing or no subbing. The sentences with which I have issues are:

A comprehensive two year study from 2009 to 2011 on the status and distribution of raptors in the bio-diverse Wayanad district conducted at the instance of the Forest Department...

Comment: Any moron can calculate that 2009-2011 is just two years. And all biogeographic zones in the world have biodiversity. How will the reader know whether the study is comprehensive, or in what way is the study comptrehensive? So the sentence might read, A two-year study on the status and distribution of raptors in the Wayanad district ....The study, which was conducted at the instance of the Forest Department, ...

According to Dr. Kurup Kerala is a habitat to 55 birds of prey species including owls.
Comment: When the dependent clause appears before the independent clause, the former must be separated with a comma. According to Dr. Kurup, Kerala...

Among them is the critically endangered species of white-rumped vulture which was found to be regularly breeding at three specific sites in the Wayanad Wlidlife Sanctuary.

Comment: It is wildlife, and not Wlidlife.

Among them is the critically endangered white-rumped vulture, which was found to be regularly breeding at three specific sites in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary.

The critically endangered red headed vulture was also regularly observed in the district.

Comment: It is red-headed.

He recommends immediate steps for the careful conservation of the raptor species...

Comment: Conservation is enough, and not careful conservation.

With the growth of agriculture,...

Comment: It is growth in.

The different raptors were seen to prey on a variety of prey from inspects to large mammals like the langur.

Comment: Inspects for Insects. My God!

The Pallid Harrier, a near threatened species was found to be a regular winter visitor.

Comment: The Pallid Harrier, a near threatened species, was found to be a regular winter visitor.

On the other hand the vulture population increased during the months of April to June coinciding with the increased animal mortality in the area.

Comment:
On the other hand, the vulture population increased during April-June coinciding with the increased animal mortality in the area.

Just like the story, the mistakes continue to go on and on. That is Indian journalism today.

First come, first serve?

2011-09-22T19:48:00.002+05:30

I did not have any idea about the origins of the phrase, First come, first served, until a mistake in an email I read got me thinking.

The Daily Writing Tips has an excellent article on the history of the popular phrase, which is converted by net-savvy geeks to FCFS. The same geeks create the mistake, first come, first serve. To read the mistaken phrase is definitely irritating at times.

So, first come, first served, and no more first come, first serve.

The horrific "revert back"

2011-09-20T15:47:00.001+05:30

Countless emails, often from the big bosses of the corporate world, contains the nauseating mistake "revert back".

"....Revert back to me if you have any questions." This is what I saw a few days back in an email from someone whose name shoots everybody's BP up.

The verb, Revert, here is used in the sense, to go back in thought or discussion. Therefore, revert back is a redundant expression, as the word implies the sense of going 'back".

So, do not revert back, just revert.

Word 2007 error - This file is read-only

2011-08-25T13:43:00.001+05:30

You are working on a very important document that your manager wants immediately. You have opened the Word 2007 application, and is entering the content pretty fast. After a few minutes, you click Save. And to your surprise, the Word 2007 document says that "This file is "read-only". Shocked and no time to do a Google search?

The solution to this annoying pop-up screen is very simple. Do the following steps to avert this problem:
1. From within the Office 2007 document, click the Office button or Ribbon.
2. Click the Word Options button.
3. Click Advanced in the Word Options screen that appears.
4. Scroll down to the Save section.
5. If the Allow background saves box is selected, click once to deselect it.

6. Click the OK button.

Powerplay and Tsunami

2011-03-13T19:12:00.004+05:30

Powerplay is a term used in the world of cricket. It was intended to increase the othewise boring middle overs of the game. But as World Cup Cricket 2011 unfurled, the host India found the powerplay too hot to handle. Powerplay has become an Achilles heel in the host's batting lineup as the batsmen simply squandered away the side's dominant position by playing extravagant shots. India narrowly escaped from the jaws of defeat against England, and lost, in a shameful fashion, to South Africa despite raising the prospect of an imposing total.

After 2004, the dreaded Tsunami returned to the news in Japan, which saw a fierce wave after an earthquake of 8.9 magnitude. The Tsunami also affected a few of the country's nuclear reactors. The effect of the Tsunami waves on the nuclear reactors have already raised questions on the safety aspects and ecological impacts of such reactors. I share my grief with those who lost their lives and dear ones in Japan.

Interesting Links and News - Jan 20

2011-01-20T10:46:00.002+05:30

The abbreviation, Statement of Work, appeared in an email I received today. Decided to know more about it and landed right on Wikipedia.

25 commandements for journalists from Tim Radford, former Guardian science editor, letters editor, arts editor and literary editor. Excellent stuff.

"Mobile number portability (MNP), which allows customers to switch service providers without changing their cell number, will be available across India from Thursday (January 20)," says The Telegraph daily. The question is who will gain the most if people change their service providers in large numbers. "More than one out of six mobile phone subscribers (17.6%) want to switch over to another telecom company," says The Hindustan Times. Business Standard says that if the service providers tweak their plans, customers may be the winners.

I wonder what will happen if the same is done for DTH services. Because DTH subscribers are the most unhappy lot, compared to mobile subscribers.

Deadly Congo fever virus surfaces in India, reports The Telegraph. The Indian Express says, "A six-member team from the National Centre for Disease Control...will visit Gujarat to investigate the prevalence of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic fever (CCHF)."

Accelerated melting of sea-ice over the coming decades will release more mercury into the environment, says a study. At present, the absence of sunlight prevents the chemical degradation of the heavy metal element.

Understanding Poetry: A Basic Checklist

2011-01-09T14:07:00.003+05:30

A poem can be understood by trying to answer the following: who, what, when, where, and why. But it is wise to keep in mind the following to understand it fully:

Title: Understand the link between the title of the poem and the poem itself.

Speaker or character: Identify the speaker or the characters mentioned in the poem.

Setting: Find out the setting in which the poem is based on.

Situation: Understand the situation the speaker is in and its relevance to the poem.

Words: Understand the meaning of all the words in the poem, repetitions of words, punctuation, unusual expressions, capitalisation etc.

Form: The form in which the poem is written and whether it changes or develops into some other form.

Theme: The subject of or the idea behind the poem and the experience it tends to evoke, or the message it seeks to convey.

Imagery: Note the words that indicate or describe the auditory, visual, tactile, taste, smell, and movement in the poem and their contribution to the meaning or the poem itself.

Figures of Speech: Identify the type of figure of speech used. This includes simile, metaphor, paradox, personification, synecdoche (a part standing for the whole), metonymy (one standing for another), pun, hyperbole, irony, symbols etc.

An Act for Plain Writing

2011-01-06T15:03:00.003+05:30

If you have read official documents released by the central government or the state governments in India, you will know the pain. The writing in such documents is characterised by ambiguos, lengthy, and wordy sentences. "Officialese" is the name given to such kind of writing. The same applies to legal documents also.

Now, the US government has decided to do something about obscure writing. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 seeks to etsbalish that "Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes."

Interestingly, the act defines "plain writing" as "writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience." So, plain writing gets legal approval. Technical writers beware!

Traitorware and privacy

2011-01-03T15:39:00.000+05:30

Traitorware are "devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It actually got me thinking about my new smartphone, which may be leaking or accessing information to someone. Dangerous times ahead, as I started reading Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live.

Meanwhile, I have to check my location security settings and disable it. That is my New Year resolution.

Today's Links

2010-12-16T13:28:00.002+05:30

How To Predict A Failing Hard Drive
10 Awesome Safe For Work Websites To Overcome Lunchtime Boredom
A portal on tax related affairs and laws in India
Free Data Recovery Software
http://www.longreads.com/ to read long articles.
Track anonymous and missed calls with Phone2location.

Is this a Website?

2010-12-16T13:20:00.001+05:30

As a user, would you bother to visit this website again? If you do not recognise it, the site belongs to The New Indian Express, one of the popular English dailies in India.

Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards

2010-11-29T20:40:00.000+05:30

It is a fact that albums released by Joe Satriani are good. Or no albums by this virtuoso guitarist is bad.

The latest album, Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards, is simply perfect, melodious, and technically excellent. Right from Premonition, through keyboard laden Pyrrhic Victoria, bluesy Littleworth Lane, rocking Light Years Away, and The Golden Room with an Indian sound, the album is a listener's pleasure. Like all his previous albums, the songs are simply beautiful, but more world music oriented stuff with a tinge of dance music thrown in the right measure. The album is an intelligent shift towards international music, and drifts away from the 80s harder and heavier sound.

If I compare Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards with his previous stuff such as Surfing With The Alien, Flying In A Blue Dream, and The Extremist, then I feel disappointed. Gone are the lighting fast solos, power chords, and exploding riffs. Satch is no more a metal-friendly act. He has abandoned the "metal wave" sound that drew guys like me to him. For metal guitar, I need to look somewhere else. May be Malmsteen might save the day for me.

Walk in, Walk In, or walk-in?

2010-11-18T16:35:00.003+05:30

Is it Walk in, Walk In, or walk-in?

The word, walk-in, appears as a noun and an adjective in Merriam Webster online. I could not find the word without the hyphen. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary website showed the hyphenated word only.

As you know, the word means someone who walks in to a place without an appointment. Typical examples are walk-in customers for a bank, walk-in interviews for fresh graduates, and walk-in patients in a hospital.

Editing Technical and User Documentation

2010-11-17T16:16:00.002+05:30

As technical writers, most of us get a chance to review documents prepared by colleagues or writers from other teams. While a few may be reluctant to do reviews, it is a fact that the reviews provide technical writers with an opportunity to participate in the quality control process of user and technical documentation.

If the team has a technical editor, he or she may be left with enough time to do a thorough review of documents. A process will be in place to plan and complete editing. If one of the team members take up the taks of editing, the edits mostly will be a mix of “copy-editing” and “technical editing". A“production edit” can also be done on the draft versions of the PDFs created to ensure that everything is all right before it is send to the customer. The limiting factor indeed is time.

The first step in editing is to read the entire document once. It is indeed a quick read just to get an idea of what is it all about. Such a reading does give me an idea about what can possibly be the editing effort required and the complexity of the edit. On most occasions, I have been successful in marking one or more glaring issues.

In the second phase, start reading the document word by word and line by line. I begin by marking the typical copy-editing stuff using the track changes in Word or FrameMaker or as sticky notes or comments in Acrobat Professional, or even in emails. The copy-editing errors looked into include spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, style, and writing consistency. I tread carefully on spelling mistakes because I do not want to miss spelling errors borne out of a mix of English styles such as UK English and US. I put comments as well as suggestions where the usage, grammar, and punctuation used are mixed up. For example, a comma before the conjunction “and” in a list.

Other issues focused include the voice and the tense used. Paragraphs often have sentences written in active and passive voices. I often feel that some sentences look better in passive voice, rather than in active voice. I keep an eye on sentences that suddenly shift tenses from the present to the past and even to the future for unknown reasons. I also ensure that the author follow a consistent style across the document, including the capitalization used, the terminology used, the length of sentences, and so on. Sentence construction is always a tricky issue. Paragraphs are checked to ensure that multiple ideas are not stacked, but spread out in multiple paragraphs.

Beyond copy editing, I specifically look for sentences that are technical, speak the SME's language and not the user's languages, filled with jargon, and ambiguous. The technical nature of the text and badly constructed sentences create lots of cruft. The result is the user finds it difficult to comprehend the meaning and the idea. A documentation bug is the result in such a scenario.

In other cases, there is less focus on context, but more on procedural tasks. As a result, the reader will not know what a particular feature is about, why he or she should do it, and what exactly can be achieved. Clearing these issues, at times, involve talking to the author or referring to documents such as requirement specs and design documents. In such documents, I put suggestions to rewrite the paragraphs or sentences for clarity. Compromise is the mantra.

At times, another strategy employed has worked wonders while editing. This is to log in to the application and match the procedures in the documents with the application (I know this will not work for complex software and hardware). Such a strategy helps me in ensuring whether crucial elements or steps of the work flow are missing from the documentation. It can be a field, a menu, a drop-down item, or buttons, or a shortcuts, related tasks, and so on. A technical editor can also look into issues such as the mismatch in documenting the names of GUI elements, dissimilarity between the screenshots and procedures, screen names, the tab flow of fields (if present), mandatory values, lack of troubleshooting tips, and so on.

I also look into the template issues, formatting, and layout. Currently, this involves correct use of character and paragraph tags and master pages, heading styles and hierarchy. On PDFs, I also check whether cross-references work and whether they land on the page intended. I do comment on the overall layout: topics starting at the end of the page, orphan sentences and bulleted lists, and pages starting with screenshots and notes and warnings, procedures without intros. I also check the white space present in pages and the proportion of body text and graphics on a particular page so that the “weight” is balanced.

I like words and like to review definitions of terms. While a few can be verified using the internet, on many instances, I need to discuss them with the authors as well as the experts.

I check the organization of the document. Instead of topics organized to relate to each other, topics may look disparate and incoherent. They may lack unity among various sections of the document. It simply means the whole will not be the sum of its parts. Typically, I will try to ensure that writers do not miss the crucial aspect of ensuring a flow so that the information is rendered not usable. If a casual reader cannot find the information easily, imagine the plight of the user who is busy to finish the task. I love cross-references in te documents. I feel the absence of adequate cross references thwarts the unity of the document.  If I enter a few details, I should know how to verify that information. Documentation and its architecture sometimes miss this crucial element.

Finally, I just close the document and come back to it later to review my comments. I do this to ensure that I have missed anything and I have not done any hyper-editing.

For me, copy-editing or technical editing is not nitpicking. It is not an act to put someone on the defensive. It is a quality control process to ensure delivery of good and quality documentation to customers. It is also a learning process for me, as I need to be first sure that my concerns are right, and my findings are valid. It is not necessarily that I am always right. The author can also be right and I can learn from him or her. It is a collaborative process to ensure that the efforts fulfill the wider objectives set for.

Copy editing in Newspapers

2010-11-15T08:52:00.004+05:30

How different is copy editing from the editing you do as part of your technical writing? Some might feel that it is nothing compared to what is done in technical writing. Others might say a lot can be carried from newspaper copy editing to technical editing. Others might say both are miles apart.

I can't help from saying that there is an awful lot of misunderstanding about a copy editor's work in newspapers. On the internet, one of the best quoted or linked source of what a copy editor does is at The Slot. Click here to read The Slot's article on What Exactly is a Copy Editor. Here, I don't intend to pass judgements on which one is more challenging and complex, or which one is easy.

Let me put my perspective what a copy editor (sub editor in Indian parlance) does. Firstly, it is neither a "mere" editing job, nor a proofreading job. It is job with lots of responsibility, pressure, and requires syncing with the editorial team, the reporting team, the graphics team, advertising, and even the sales and marketing team.

A copy editor, as a journalist, needs to know something about everything under the sun. Knowing everything means learning new subjects and keeping track of the happenings in the English language and the profession. (Unlike in the media, a technical writer can focus on the particular domain or tool based on his or her job requirements. He or she is not supposed to know each and every domain).

When a copy editor walks in and logs into his or her machine, there will be nothing on the "queue" to edit. Stories filed by reporters, correspondents, senior journalists, start to flow in slowly, often late in the evening. Of the stories that come in, one has to be selected as the lead or main story. A lead story appears more prominent on the page, usually at the top left or right, spreads across many columns, and is set in the biggest headline style. Editing is based on the house style and the copy editor has to keep an eye on the legal implications of stories.

While most of the day is spent on editing news stories, an hour or more is left to design or make pages using a software like QuarkXPress. A copy editor usually makes more than one page. It is here that the skills get really tested.

The reason is the page. A copy editor does not have any control of the preliminary design of the page. You can consider the page as the template we often talk about in technical writing. Typically, a page is divided into 7-8 columns. This template is initially drafted by the "ad" department. Pages will have ads, which take a few columns at the bottom of the page, or half the page. The more the ad space is, the more happy the copy editor is. This means that the "template" a copy editor works on is never the same. A copy editor actually works on widely different templates daily.

The templates are different, but the deadline is the same. The templates are different, but the level of edits required for stories are different. Moreover, every page requires photos to balance the weight on the page. And if the ad department comes with a last minute change, you can imagine the pressure and the mess the copy editor can be in.

The newspaper industry is the only industry that releases a new product every day. In the mornings, you read the news edited by copy editors and view the pages designed by the copy editors last night.

Engaging User Documentation

2010-11-10T14:33:00.004+05:30

One of the words that technical communicators should have in their vocabulary is Engage. Because the word also means to "become involved." In reality, many technical writers refuse to get "actively" involved with the project teams and refuse to accept responsibility for mistakes on their part. A few even consider
themselves as "individual contributors" in a team.

Technical writers cannot sit before the desktops and imagine that everything—information, reference documents, software build, and so on—will reach them automatically. They cannot simply shift the blame for incorrect information or missing information in their documents to someone else. For technical writers of any level, engaging themselves with the project team is the most crucial aspect. This may require lots of legwork, casual chat, and intent to even befriend a few team members.

The primary benefit of such an interaction is more or less complete documentation of the software and feature developed. Even though project managers may not be that keen to interact with technical writers, there are others with whom the technical writers can get involved. It is this healthy involvement of technical writers with software developers, testers, and SMEs that will enhance the reputation of the technical writer and improve the understanding of the work a technical writer does. Technical writers would also benefit in understanding the functionality properly and get a holistic view by engaging fully with the team, and not just with the SME.

This kind of "internal networking" will benefit a technical writer in multiple ways. As mentioned earlier, a good engagement works wonders for preparing a complete and proper documentation. It also helps the technical writer to understand the software and the domain in a better manner. It also drives a technical writer to provide feedback, ask questions from the user perspective, and even don the role of a tester at times. Some of the feedback or queries raised can even become a critical issue or priority task for the development team.

A successful engagement will gradually increase the flow of information to the technical writer. People, who earlier refused to divulge information, will open up and provide tidbits of information that will aid the technical writer to write better documentation. For those looking for everything to arrive at their desks, technical
writing is not the best profession.

Links for the Weekend

2010-10-17T12:42:00.000+05:30

Pictures of the just concluded Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Very few photos of Indian winners anyway.
Adobe Dreamweaver's tutorial on building a first website. More here.
This PDF on Introduction to XML and Structured FrameMaker 7.x gives a good overview of concepts.

Alcatel-Lucent opens regional delivery centre in Bangalore, says CNN-IBN.
A science story that was too premature to be published: IISc scientists make progress on new thyroid drug
The Sunday Times on the literary feud between Noble laureates, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
30 lakh mobiles disconnected over verification.
Oct 16 was World Food Day. "United Against Hunger" is this year's theme.
Nothing great in this list of top 50 guitar riffs of the decade.

Technical Writing and XML Basics-Part 1

2010-10-01T17:38:00.001+05:30

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that allows you to define and structure data using tags and attributes. The capabilities of XML can be extended by creating new tags. Data can be structured and validated easily. XML documents works cross-platform. In XML, there is clear separation between data or contents (XML document) and presentation. The presentation is specified by the Stylesheet.

Processing Instruction (PI): The XML declaration statement that begins the XML document.

Tags (< >): The name that identifies the piece of information.

Elements: Basic units that identify and describe data. A Root element contains all other elements. Elements that contain other elements are parent elements. Elements contained in Parent elements are Child elements.

Content: Data represented by the elements.

Attributes: Provides additional information about elements and includes a name and value pair. Elements and attributes are the building blocks of DTD.

Entity: W3Schools.org (http://www.w3schools.com/dtd/dtd_entities.asp) defines entities as “variables used to define shortcuts to standard text or special characters.”

PCDATA: Text parsed by a parser.

CDATA: Characters not parsed by a parser.

DTD: Short for document type definition. Defines the structure of data in an XML document. Specifies the elements, their attributes, and their relationships. Using DTD, you can specify whether an element is mandatory or optional.

Internal DTDs occur within the XML document and cannot be used across multiple documents. External DTDs sit as separate files an can be used across multiple documents. XML documents contain references to external DTDs.

Parsing: Process that validates the structure of date in XML documents using programs called parsers. A validating parser validates the XML against the DTD.

XML Schema: Defines the structure of an XML document. It defines the elements, attributes, and the data types.

XSD language: The language used to describe the structure or elements in an XML schema. XSD allows creating new data types.

Stylesheets: Cascading style sheet (CSS) and eXtensible stylesheet language (XSL) are the stylesheets used for XML documents.

XSLT: The language used to transform XML documents into other formats such as XHTML. XSL contains XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XML Path (XPath). XML Path is the language for navigating XML docs.

Interesting links

2010-09-29T14:52:00.001+05:30

Tips to circle text or object for emphasis in PowerPoint.
Which kind of technical writer are you?
Robohelp tutorials on You Tube.
More about Immersive Journalism.
HTML, CSS, and Java Script videos on Google.
How to avoid risks posed by tabbed browsing.
Adobe TV for technical communication.
Getting started in technical communication.
Things non-technical users do not understand about software.
Earth-Like Planet Can Sustain Life, says Discovery.
The Social Network: Ecosystem vs. Egosystem.
A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices.

Afternoon Notes

2010-09-08T13:14:00.000+05:30

Swinge - A verb meaning meaning thrash or punish.

Obama wants to keep them for all but the rich; the doves think they should be continued for everyone and the hawks say they should not only be abandoned but accompanied by swingeing tax rises..

The following terms impressed me very much:

Pluralia Tantum - A word meaning nouns that have only plural forms. Thanks to Richard Nordquist.

Singulare tantum - Nouns that appear in singular form only.

The following are extracts from an Prospect magazine article:

"...Psychoanalysis was born 113 years ago when Freud applied the term “psychical analysis” to his treatment of disturbed patients....CBT, now the NHS treatment of choice, was developed in the 1960s by American psychoanalyst, Aaron T Beck."

The End of Science (1996) is a book written by John Horgan, a staff writer for Scientific American.

Science News

2010-09-05T18:54:00.000+05:30

1. Water molecules in Antarctic fish "dance a more ordered" dance due to the presence of anti-freeze proteins in their body, said a news report. The technique used to study this is called "terahertz spectroscopy".

Spectroscopy is a method by which an object's properties are studied by the way it disperses light passed through it. This is just like passing sunlight through a prism. When light is passed through a prism, it breaks into its constituent colours. By studying the constituent colours, scientists can know more about an object's properties.

Terahertz spectroscopy uses frequencies in the range of 0.3 THz to 10 THz. This frequency is invisible to the naked eye and can penetrate matter. In this study, Terahertz spectroscopy was used to study the interaction of water molecules with the anti-freeze proteins.

2. "...Universe was formed because of laws of physics and not divine intervention, " said acclaimed scientist, Stephen Hawking. He has added that the Universe was created spontaneously and the M-Theory would offer the best explanation for the creation of Universe.

Planet Earth is in Deep Trouble

2010-05-09T10:09:00.000+05:30

The Environment was back in the news because of an oil spill at the Gulf of Mexico and the release of a report by US president Obama's cancer panel of the link between chemicals and cancer. Oil spills cause irreparable damage to fauna and flora, and people who depend on these resources for livelihood. The recurring episode shows that we have not yet learnt the right lessons from Exxon Waldez.

The report prepared by Obama's cancer panel says that, "...Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from cancer...". The panel, in its 240-page report, suggests strengthening of research into environment chemicals and cancer. The chapter, Environmental Exposures Related to Modern Lifestyles, is a great read on how humans are being exposed to environmental carcinogens daily.

After carbon footprint, the digital footprint is also affecting the environment or is going to affect the environment in a much bigger way. A report in Guardian says that cloud computing will use energy in such a way that the carbon footprint increases by leaps and bounds, unless reined in by truly green technologies. Jan Wildeboer, an open source evangelist, says in a video posted on YouTube that proprietary formats will augment the volumes of digital waste, unless replaced with open source formats. Sounds pretty grim. Watch the video anyway.

BBC reports that the ash misery from Eyjafjallajökull will continue to haunt air travellers.

Commonplace Books and Echo Chamber Effect

2010-05-09T09:48:00.000+05:30

I have a fascination for terms and jargons. My eyes lit up when I feel that the connotation of something I read is more than skin deep.

Commonplace books: I saw this word in a post titled, The Glass Box And The Commonplace Book. Wikipedia defines the words as "Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into book."

Echo Chamber Effect: Echo Chamber effect is used to describe how media outlets follow stories reported by a major media outlet.

A Few Quotes

2010-05-05T09:27:00.000+05:30

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting-Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Beauty, the last triumph possible for man who can no longer hope-Milan Kundera in The Art of the Novel.

We live in an age of conspiracy theories, some people preferring to believe that nothing is ever what it is but an elaborate plot by powers elsewhere-From Malcolm Bradbury's Doctor Criminale.

The sea is a symbol of collective unconscious because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface-Carl Jung in Dreams

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end up by destroying the Earth-Albert Schweitzer

Daily Recap

2010-05-01T11:34:00.000+05:30

I watched the recorded version of the Author-IT Dynamic Assistance Platform webinar. It was interesting to read Steve Job's article on Adobe Flash, and also to know that Ozzfest 2010 would have Girls Girls Girls! fame Motley Crue and Rob Halford. Another article says technical writes can be good scientifc writers( not sure), while The FrameMaker Five turned out to be written for FrameMaker 9. On a day I bought a few Indian philosophy books, there comes a list of science fiction detective novels in New Scientist. The week also saw the Indian parliament passing a bill to establish a national green tribunal in India. According to Business Standard, this is "the first serious attempt in the country towards environmental rights."

Daily Recap

2010-04-27T19:26:00.000+05:30

The barbaric act of Hartal was enacted by Marxist-led political parties in my home state of Kerala, in the name of protest against high food prices.

The Word MVPs site I frequent regularly has an interesting and long article on Conditional Cross-Reference Labels for Numbered Headings, while PowerPoint earned some flak from the US military. Alternet ran an excellent article on the deleterious impacts of industrial agriculture on the environment and Bangalore daily Deccan Herald published a dubious article supporting GE crops. It was refreshing to read about the rise of new generation of British poets (I am currently reading poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy's poems anyway) and an interview with well-known science fiction author Ray Bradbury, who has never been to college. Noted defence analyst K Subramanyam writes on Communication intelligence in the backdrop of the phone tapping allegations by opposition politicians in India.

Usage of And/Or

2010-04-22T11:41:00.000+05:30

The debate on whether "and/or" is correct or not refuses to die down. It was pleasing to see an entry on 'and/or" in the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ site (Look at the March Q&A section).

In the March Q&A, CMOS says, "...and/or “can often be replaced by and or or with no loss in meaning." For multiple choices, CMOS says use or . . . or both .

Despite knowing this, we make mistakes, right?

Phenomenons or Phenomena?

2010-04-22T10:12:00.000+05:30

What is the plural form of phenomenon? School kids will tell it is phenomena. But what happened to "phenomena" in this newspaper report?

Pachauri said: "Given the variations in the ocean currents, wind patterns and related sedimentation as well as other phenomenons related to the weather..."

The news report also has other usage issues. "The six-member Pachauri Committee, tasked to examine the possibility of cutting a canal through land mass between Dhanuskodi and Rameshwaram,..."

Tasked to? When Task is used as a a verb, 'with' follows it. It can be "tasked with" and not "tasked to".

The third paragraph has a spelling mistake in "environemntally", that too on World Earth Day!

Technical Writing and 5Ws' and one H

2010-04-21T20:59:00.000+05:30

Can the legendary 5 Ws' and one H, widely used in journalism, applicable to technical writing as well? I had this doubt after I viewed a presentation titled, How to Write.

Let us look what 5 W's and One in journalism. It means:
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

Does who, when, and where matter for a scenario where a user is operating a software? I have my doubts. Anyway, this is an interesting point and I will keep it in my mind whether 5Ws' and One H can indeed be a guideline for technical writing.

In journalis, the inverted pyramid style evolved due to space constraints in a newspaper. For a newspaper, space is a very important thing, because ads occupy some amount of space in a newspaper page. Moreover, the technique was also useful to readers who want to get all the necessary information by reading the first paragraph or lead. It is difficult to apply the same in the strictest sense to a user manual. While space is finite in a newspaper, it is not so for a user manual. Page design also does not limit how much and what you can put in a user manual page.

Journalism is called the first draft of history. A user manual is not a first draft of history. The content in a technical document is always restricted by the product it documents, and it is always meant for specific or multiple audiences. Unlike journalism, where the topics are varied, a user manual is somewhat restricted in what it can document.

The level of precision required in a technical document is very high, compared to newspapers. Newspapers deal with facts, that can turn wrong later, because News is supplied by human sources with a specific personal intent. Such news can be true or it can turn out to be false later. SMEs in a software company do not have a personal choice in providing information. What they provide or what the technical writers learn should be precise information.

In most companies, technical documents get written based on approved structure and style. The writing is always restricted by a style guide that effectively prescribes the Do's and Dont's. In journalism, there is considerable freedom to write in a style that suits the writer. In fact, media houses do have a style guide, but features provide the journalist to adopt a free style in their writings.

Lastly, technical docs are meant for users to complete a particular task. They are not meant to entertain anybody. Moreover, the news published is governed by values such as proximity and significance.

The challenge in technical writing is to convert complex technical concepts to simple information readable by any kind of user. This is a unique challenge that requires considerable self-study, analysis, and judgement. Writing a front-page story is not that similar to writing complete procedures that can reduce support calls.

Terms for Technical Writers

2010-04-20T18:13:00.000+05:30

Agile Development: Software development based on an iterative and incremental approach. Regular feedback and frequent changes effected to plans to develop a software. See Agile Manifesto for more.

API: Short for Application Programming Interface. According to Webopedia, An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for developing software products.

Application Server: A software (set up in a centralised location) used in intranet/internet environment to query databases or for business processing.

Batch Process: A process that runs a series of commands or processes.

Build: Generally, a pre-release version of a software program. There will be many builds that will be tested before the final product is shipped to the customer.

Burndown chart: In Agile software development, this chart tracks sprint progress so that project managers can decide which items must be removed from the sprint backlog and moved to the next sprint.

CSV File: Short for Comma Separated Value file, which is a file format used to exchange data between different applications.

Design Spec: A technical document that contains descriptions of the design of a particular product.

DITA: Short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information.

Eclispe: Eclipse is an open source and free development environment.

Exception: In Java, exception refers to an object that describes an error condition in the code.

Flat File: A text file or database that contains unrelated records.

Iteration: In Agile software development, a short period of time (varies from two weeks to a month) in which the development team develops a complete feature or functionality.

JDK: Short for Java Development Kit. A Java Development Kit (JDK) is an environment for creating Java applets and applications.

Run book: A reference document, generally used by system administrators, containing procedures to begin, stop, and supervise a system or network.

Single Sourcing: A documentation approach used to create multiple documents from a single content source or library.

Six Sigma: A data driven system to continuously build and improve quality into processes and products developed.

SOA: Short for Service Oriented Architecture.

SOP: Short for standard operating procedures. A document that contains the standrad operating procedures to run a system efficiently.

Table: In a relational database, a Table is a set of columns that contain data.

Test Case: A document that lists inputs, actions, events and the results expected from a working software build. This is used to test the functionality or feature developed by the software development team.

Test Plan: A plan that details the approach to test a software as a whole, and not the parts.

Topic-based Authoring: A content creation approach that creates stand-alone content, which can be easily reused in any context, managed, and assembled.

Use Case: A document that describes how a type of user uses a sofware to achieve a particular goal or goals.

Software Design Document: A document describing a software or an overview of the architecture of the software. There are two kinds of design documents: High Level Design Document (HLDD) and Low Level Design Document (LLDD).

XML: Short for Extensible Markup Language, a markup language.

Bad Day for Indian Space Research

2010-04-15T20:31:00.000+05:30

It was sad to read that India's efforts to launch the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle(GSLV D-3), powered by indigenously developed cryogenic engine, failed to succeed. Read the report in the Times of India.

List of Celebrities

2010-04-11T14:35:00.000+05:30

The following minds do not find space in newspapers and magazines published in India:

Agnes Heller - Hungarian philosopher

Héctor Abad Faciolince-Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. He has studied Medicine, Journalism, and Philosophy.

Claire Denis, the well-known French film director.

Uladzimir Arlou becomes first laureate of “European Poet of Freedom” award.

French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter

Geert Lovink-media theorist, net critic and activist.

Javier Cercas, writer and Professor of Spanish literature.

Rosa Montero is an award-winning journalist and author of contemporary fiction.

Manuel Rivas is a Galician writer, poet and journalist, and founding member of Greenpeace Spain.

Michal Hvorecky is a Slovak author and winner of many prestigious awards.

Robert Pinsky is a well-known American poet, and the poetry editor at Slate.

Krzysztof Varga -Polish writer and journalist.

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated.

Edward Hirsch, American poet, has writteb a book, How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry.

Barbara Ras is an american poet.

Colm Tóibín-award-winning Irish novelist and critic.

The Word Hurt Locker

2010-04-02T15:12:00.000+05:30

Hurt Locker means a state of intense physical or mental pain, says the MacMillan dictionary.

Hurt Locker won the Best Movie Oscar this year.

New Screen Capture Tool

2010-01-31T09:12:00.000+05:30

Here's a new screencasting tool: http://www.screenpresso.com/index.html.

For Windows XP users, Microsoft.Net Framework is required.

The Thing Called Relational Database

2010-01-24T13:55:00.001+05:30

I have attended meetings that often discussed and questioned how the product I document on access or query the database at the implementation level. While a few of these 'technical' discussions do not make much sense, it usullay creates a sense of curiosity to know a little more on the topic.

It was with much interest that I read, Is the Relational Database Doomed?, an excellent piece on relational databases and alternatives. I cannot help myself from telling that this is a great piece of 'technical writing. Great post!

GNR Rocks

2010-01-18T20:45:00.000+05:30

Rolling Stone report on GNR live was an interesting news to read. It was 1989 when I first listened to 'Sweet Child of Mine' through the Voice of America.

Bad Day for Indian Science

2010-01-18T20:11:00.000+05:30

1. The goof-up over Himalayan glaciers is nothing new as far as Indian science is concerned. Anybody, who is a bit acquainted with Indian universities, knows what happens in the departments and labs.

But the absence of official action against those who disgraced India in front of the world Himalayan glaciers is a bit hard to digest. And, even more, I did not understand what this lead to a story on CNN-IBN really meant. Poor journalism anyway. "The Rajendra Pachauri-led Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that claimed that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 owing to climate change and global warning was made without any scientific basis."

The problem with this sentence is that it is both wrong and confusing. It must have been rewritten to clear the ambiguity caused by the word 'that'.

2. From Coredump, I went to Wall Street Journal to peer at the salaries technical writers get in the West. Looks good.

3. Should I watch Avatar or not? There is indeed a buzz around town to not skip this movie. I've my doubts. By the way, when did the Golden Globe became the benchmark for us, the poor Indians. I salute the Sanskrit language for the word.

My Old Notebooks

2010-01-10T13:21:00.000+05:30

I've not discarded my old university notebooks, as I cannot forget the glorious days of my post graduate studies. It looks as if I'll never get back those golden days, when only knowledge and discovery mattered and nothing else.

Today, I opened one of those notebooks. The funny thing is a few of these notebooks are a collage of lectures of different subjects. There is no continuity in the notes.

In the first few pages, it lists the following types of volcanic rocks:

Andesite, Apanitic, and Basalt

Next, it lists the texture:
Glassy, Vesicles, Porphry, Pegmatite, Plutonic rocks, Phaneritic, Gabbro, Ultramafic
Diorite, Granite, Rhyolite, Obsidian, Country or Wall Rock, Concordant, Pipes and Necks, Dykes and Sills, Laccolith, Lopoliths, Stock and Batholith, Extrusive, Chilled Margins, Xenoloiths, Clastic sediments

A brief note on sting rays is written in pencil. This is followed by pictures and descriptions of the following animals: Sardine, Echeinesis, Cynoglossus, Mullet (there is a newspaper photo of Erikson with Stephen Graubard), Salamander, Axolotl, Gegenophis, Rhacophorus, Clarias, Necturus, arterial system of a frog, Cobra.

The first part of the notebook ends here. The text then returns its direction. I start reading again.

This part starts with notes on physiology and then moves to two ecology topics, Symbiosis and Mutualism. Mites follow these topics followed by tables on Geological Time Scale, notes comparing Anopheles and Culex mosquitoes, and notes on bed bugs. Notes on the blood group system, ABO, appears after a brief note on ecology. I read with interest these notes with also had info on the Lewis system.

Notes on agricultural pests, a beetle and shoot borer, is followed by Rh-antigen and its inheritance, pests of sugarcane, a list of topics on animal physiology, cytology and genetics, economic zoology, which I assume can be questions related to old question papers.

Embryology comes next, with notes on Modulations, ooplasm, evocation, and names of two textbooks. I don't remember whether I've read these textbooks. Diagrams on polygenic inheritance of fruits. This section of the note ends after a few blank pages.

I close the notebook, as a dog whines somewhere in the residential lane nearby.

Let the media be slow

2010-01-05T11:14:00.001+05:30

Trevor Butteworth writes an excellent piece on the need for a slow media movement, to restore the grandeur or decency of good old journalism. He says, "The idea of consuming less, but better, media--of a "slow word" or "slow media" movement--is a strategy journalism should adopt."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/29/media-newspapers-internet-opinions-columnists-trevor-butterworth.html

Changing YouTube language

2009-12-13T11:56:00.000+05:30

Whenever I open YouTube in Internet Explorer (IE) 8, the home page appears in the Hindi language, mixed with English. I did a bit of search on the Internet, which did not give any solutions. I am using Vista, but when I use Windows XP to open the same site, everything is fine.

So when I open YouTubein IE 8, it looks like the following image:

To view the pages in English, I need to change the language. For this, I scroll down the page, as shown in the following image:

I will then click on the last item on the selected box. The item in Hindi means Show Languages. On clicking, I will get a list of languages as shown in the following image:

I click on English UK. The site home page refreshes automatically and shows the page in the language I chose, as shown in the following image:

Tip: If you have any other browser installed on your PC, open the You Tube site with it. When I open You Tube with FireFox, I do not get this error.

How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic

2009-12-12T18:44:00.000+05:30

Ben Goldacre, whose blog I like very much, points to an exciting link on how to "deal' with climate change scceptics. It is a "...a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed accross the internet..."

Click How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic

Copenhagen and common editorial

2009-12-07T17:58:00.001+05:30

A few interesting links on the Copenhagen Climate summit:

It was a great gesture to see 16 newspapers publishing a common editorial on climate change. As expected, only The Hindu daily from India published the editorial.

Common editorial on Copenhagen

The Hindu link: http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/07/stories/2009120757400100.htm

The Guardian link on Copenhagen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/04/copenhagen-climate-change-conference-liveblog

Climate change through cycle
http://rideplanetearth.org/

Origin of Species hits half century

2009-11-24T20:18:00.000+05:30

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species celebrates 150 years.

From Clive Cussler's Arctic Drift

2009-11-10T20:59:00.000+05:30

Reading Clive Cussler's novel, Arctic Drift, introduced me to words and terms unique to the author's genre. The words I noted down include the following:

Coho salmon: A small Pacific salmon.

Starboard is a nautical term that refers to the right side of a vessel as perceived by a person on board a vessel and facing the bow (front). The equivalent for the left-hand side is port. The starboard side of a vessel is indicated with a green navigation light at night.

Fathometer is an instrument to determe the depth of water or a submerged object by means of ultrasound waves.

Throttle is a valve to regulate flow of a fluid, and thus the power or speed of an engine.

Anchor. For a ship, it is an object, often made out of metal, used to attach a ship to the bottom of a body of water at a specific point.

Plimsoll line is the marking that shows how much of a ship is under or above water.

Gangplank is a temporary footway between a ship and a dockside.

A bunkhouse is a building that historically was used to house working cowboys on ranches in North America.

An anorak or parka is a type of heavy jacket with a hood to protect the face from a combination of freezing temperatures and wind.

A track loader is an engineering vehicle consisting of a tracked chassis with a loader for digging and loading material.

Pinochle (sometimes pinocle, or penuchle), is a trick-taking game typically for two, three or four players and played with a 48 card deck.

pouilly-fume([poo-yee-fyoo-mey)-dry white wine from the Loire Valley wine-producing region of France.

Airag-mild beverage made of fermented mare's milk. It is one of main ingredients of the summer diet of Mongols.

Vichyssoise(vish-ee-swahz)-Cold soup made from a puree of the white part of leeks, potatoes, onions, chicken stock, cream and chives.

Risotto is a traditional Italian rice dish.

Mousse-sweetened dessert with whipped cream as a base.

References: Wikipedia, dictionary.com

PS: It was very interesting to search for some of terms in Google images. This list is incomplete.

Directory of Green Links

2009-10-25T14:30:00.000+05:30

http://www.grain.org/front/
Friends of Earth
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI
GeneWatch UK
International Rivers
Friends of River Narmada
Terra Daily
E Magazine
Biodiversity Hotspots
Save Bombay Committee
Green Maven
India Together environment
International Geosphere Biosphere Program
Greenpeace
WWF
International Institute for Sustainable Development
Stockholm Environment Institute
FAO Forestry
Tropenbos
Global Forest Watch
Forest Protection Portal
International Maritime Organization
United Nations Atlas of the Oceans
Coastal Management
Rivernet
Ramsar
Wetlands International
World Lakes Network
Sustainable Cities
World Meteorological Organization
UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)
IUCN
Convention on Biological Diversity
CITES
Global Biodiversity Information Portal
PlanetArk

Social media and technical writers

2009-10-14T22:24:00.000+05:30

The blogging world is abuzz with the rising popularity of social media and the way it's gonna change documentation. Microblogging sites such as Twitter and networking sites such as Facebook are expected to change documentation in a revolutionary manner.

There are predictions galore about the impending demise of printed manuals and the inevitable replacement of them with blogs, wikis, and social media (I feel this a very narrow view of how documentation would evolve/ Let us wait and see). Remember Naipaul when he said that the novel is dead.

How useful is social media to technical writers in India? I feel it is a depressing zero. Most companies in Indian restrict access to sites such as Twitter during work hours. Certain companies even block access to webmail and prevents installation of chat software. Others even go to extent of blocking internet access during work hours, ostensibly to increase productivity. In others, even blogs and forums, which I think are more useful to technical writers, are simply blocked.

Therefore, social media becomes useful for only those who have unrestricted access to the internet. For the hapless technical writers, there is nothing to gain from social media while at work.

Booker for Hilary Mantel

2009-10-07T13:42:00.001+05:30

Hilary Mantel wins the Booker prize for her "fly-on-the-wall account of the life of Henry VIII's fixer, Thomas Cromwell." To read the report, click here.

Microbial Trojan horses

2009-10-03T20:02:00.000+05:30

Twenty-one years ago, I managed to view Euglena using a microscope in the Botany lab of my college. It was simply impressive. It was difficult to view single-celled organisms such as Paramecium in the Zoology lab as the lessons started with arthropods such as cockroaches, and later small-sized sharks.

Nostalgia crept in as I read an article from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution about bacteria trapped alive in single-celled organisms. These live bacteria can be released later into the environment and the disease causing ones can create havoc in regions where public and personal hygiene is at a premium. The article says that these microbial “Trojan horses" sometimes contain pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella in high concentrations even in crop soil.

The scientists are continuing their investigations.

Jyoti Sanyal's Book and Technical Writers

2009-09-27T12:25:00.000+05:30

Jyoti Sanyal was a former assistant editor and columnist for The Statesman. His book, Indlish, is an excellent guide to how Indians should use contemporary English.

The book is an essential read for those in a writing career, including technical writers and journalists. The author identifies the four "grey" areas Indians fail to rectify in their writing. He also provides examples and tips on how these gaps can be plugged.

The following grey areas pinpointed by Sanyal in his book applies to technical writing as well:

Syntax: A primary reason why overseas clients dub Indian technical writing as bad is the writer's abject failure to understand the English syntax. Very few has a good understanding of the sentence structure and rules that govern sentence structure. Very few spend time to learn how English is used all over the world. Most of them consider writing long sentences as equivalent to their mastery over English. Technical writers argue with editors saying that a "sentence can be written in multiple ways." Unfortunately, they do not realise that the syntax in English is more rigid than Indian languages and there is no room for individual flexibility.

Noun and verb usage: Sanyal says that in Indian languages nouns are primary, while in English verbs are the most important ones. It is a matter of debate whether techncial writers really know the difference between the two.

Passive Voice: Writing in active voice is not restricted to technical writing. For more immediate and direct communication, active voice was always preferred. Active voice is the antidote to pompous writing that characterised the Victorian era and the British Raj.

Punctuation: Technical writing by non-native writers abound in punctuation errors, especially the comma. For a few, ignorance leads to errors, while for others learning is simply absent. While today's newspapers contribute a lot to perpetuating this evil, writers often think that they are free to violate the punctuation rules.

Sanyal says that while English retained the speech forms, Indian languages adopted the roundabout way of Sanskrit. Redundancy, pompousness, and passive sentences rule Indian languages, even though vernacular writers have moved away from passive voice to active voice. Our newspapers refuse to learn this and techncial writers do not like being told the ugly truth.

Norman Borlaug and environmentalists

2009-09-15T12:24:00.001+05:30

It is interesting that the obituaries of Norman Borlaug contained barbs directed at environmentalists who have critcised his brand of intensive farming. While it is true that India benefitted from his "green revolution", the fact is that it was not just the lack of food that caused famines in India. It is for the historians to correct the notion in the western media that "famine and poverty" are always associated with the history of India.

Somebody should correct the misinformation that India's progress is just a deceptive story, waiting to be dug out by western news and infotainment channels.

I found the Scientific American obituary a more balanced one, compared to others who portrayed Borlaug as an ardent supporter of GE crops and genetic engineering.

Behind Science Fiction

2009-09-12T14:08:00.000+05:30

Buoyed by Keith Solty's posts on science fiction, I was reading a bit of SF today. I started by reading a few stories and then downloaded Karl Schroeder's Crisis in Zefra.

While SF has not been my favourite genre, I still remember a lecture I listened to a few years back. It was delivered by a well-known scientist as part of a science journalism workshop. The one-hour lecture was well presented and as a listener I was busy scribbling names of the authors I have not read. The list I prepared is still with me and my job is still unfinished.

Reading Solty's tag on SF led me to Ted Chiang's wikipedia page. Ted is a technical writer who has written 'speculatiev fiction'. Well, that sounded interesting. This discovery on a dull, cloudy Saturday has forced me to look for Ted's free SF stuff on the net. Looks good!

PS: Read a few poems by Robert Penn Warren. I tried using Google images to really understand the 'depth' of the imagery in poems. That experience was interesting.

Let the classics remain as classics

2009-08-30T20:06:00.000+05:30

The world's smallest deer discovered in the Himalayas, says AP.

"I do not like to track metrics like the number of comments as a quality measure. Anything you track is likely to cause some change in behavior," says Richard L. Hamilton, author of Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation, in an interview. He also says that DocBook is used more than DITA. Interesting.

What kinds of documents do Agile software development require? Read this blog post by Eelco Gravendeel.

Making a strong case to let sci-fi movie classics to remain as classics is the article, Top 10 Sci-fi movies that should never be remade

2.6 million viewers tuned in to the final episode of the most recent series of Ladette to Lady, a TV serial that is related to reviving the debate, Why can't a woman be more like a lady?

Interview with Ian Rankin, one of my favourite crime fiction writers.

Oxford University faces flak over land use. Oxford University dragged into Indian land-grab row.

Too much frenzy over diets and fitness damages your health, says Extreme celebrity workouts can damage you.

Noted ecologist, Vandana Shiva, says there are more hungry people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cafes, eateries, restaurants

2009-08-23T14:46:00.000+05:30

Cops relax timings for cafes, eateries, said a headline in one of the Bangalore newspapers. At first, I did not bother about the headline. A little later I wondered what exactly is the difference betweeen a cafe and an eatery.

The Oxford Dictionary I have says that a cafe is a small restaurant selling light meals and drinks. In North American English, it also means a bar or nightclub.

Eatery, on the other hand, is an informal expression for "a restaurant or cafe."

So, why did the newspaper use this headline? The news report has another word " eating houses". A little research did not show any discerning difference between the two words. Which means this is bad sub-editing. The only explanation for the error is the need to fill the 'white space' for the two-line heading.

It is a fact that the quality of English in Indian newspapers are really pathetic. While it's not my case that newspapers should follow Strunk and White, it is really sad to see lack of basic English grammar and usage rules in most of the papers. This also mean that even newspapers have started to neglect English. This trend is really dangerous, especially for students. To know contemporary English, please find something else to read.

When the media loses sense

2009-08-15T18:49:00.000+05:30

The primary source of news for the average Indian is the news channels. These channels are lively, and the added effect of visuals is tremendous. But absence of any regulation, including self-regulation, has made most of these channels a laughing stock and the target of reprimand in coffee shops and software company cafes.

I agree that, compared to newspapers, there is indeed a dilution of core "journalistic" values in news presented by news channels. Instead of news, as defined in journalism textbooks and media classes, TRPs and visual angle dominates most of the news channels. Therfore, when media companies conduct event management or has an event management wing, then it's no wonder that marketing and business takes precedence over "news".

What is lost is trust in the objectivity of the news channels. The scare and hype generated over the swine flu in India again shows that the media have lost their responsibility and sense.

When everything is vague

2009-08-08T14:16:00.000+05:30

"Without interacting with the user, you can’t learn the user’s vocabulary and the tasks they need to perform. Without a knowledge of user vocabulary and tasks, your help material is destined to be unhelpful. Without helpful user assistance, your role on the project team and your own sense of importance on the project diminish."

I have pasted these words from Tom Johsnon's excellent post on the various level of harassment and stumbling blocks encountered by the hapless technical writers. Another method of ostacrization is "the domain is so vast" or "the functionality is too complex" comments. This is equivalent to telling you that I am not share my knowledge that easily with you.

When does a writer die?

2009-08-03T20:23:00.000+05:30

When I told my journalist friends that I would be joining a software firm as a technical writer, a few raised their eyebrows. While a couple of them said this was a good move, others were less optimistic and predicted that I would soon regret that decision. While I have not started to regret that decision in a very bad way, there are things I enjoy in technical writing.

The most important thing I like is the attention to detail. As a technical writer, I have to measure each and every word, each and every sentence, each and every paragraph, and each and every punctuation mark I insert. Every word I write is dear to me and I don't want people to misread it.

I also realised that continuos and constant rewriting improve my deliverable in whatever format the team wants. Rewriting is not a boring task, but it is an interesting task. For others, writing is all about writing something new. They don't understand that if they properly rewrite their own writing, it will look new. It should look new; otherwise, the writer in the technical writer is fake and is dead.

The problem of using 'You"

2009-07-06T21:13:00.000+05:30

In India, the use of 'you' in the vernacular languages is very dangerous. 'You' is a sign of bad manners and the speaker will receive a sound thrashing from the elders. The harmless second person pronoun is a sign of disrespect and challenge to authority. In Indian households, 'you' is reserved for the patriarch, and a strict no-no for children. Mind your words; you means insulting somebody.

For user manuals, Indian patriarchy has no place and 'you' is a perfectly right word to use. 'He' or 'she' invites comments on gender bias and sexist language and has no place in the manuals. Technical writers cannot use 'Dear Sir' or 'Dear Madam' to address the reader. Nor can they use words like 'Boss' or 'Guru', words that produce a dramatic effect on the sons of the soil in Bangalore.

A user manual will be read by single reader, and a single reader only. This is unlike the scene in Indian trains where bored passengers forcibly 'share' parts of a newspaper bought by somebody else. By using 'you', the technical writer talks directly to the user. It is this 'instructional' tone of writing that testers, developers, SMEs, and sundry fail to understand about technical communication. It is this ignorance that leads them to question the hapless technical writer's use of the second person pronoun.

Greening IT

2009-06-03T11:17:00.001+05:30

The Greenpeace campaign to "to turn IT industry leaders into climate advocates and solution providers" is interesting. It looks like a serious effort, unlike the PR-led corporate environmentalism.

World Environment Day

2009-05-31T11:27:00.000+05:30

As another World Environment Day arrives, we in India think about when can we live in a pollution-free city. Anil Agarwal, the late Editor of environment magazine Down to Earth, asked the right question, When will India be able to control pollution?

Ten years down the line, there is no convincing answer. Our cities continue to rot and we have stopped to care about the environment. We continue to engage in meaningless marathons, ramp shows, and awareness drives. Because these are the most easiest things to do.

In Bangalore, school students staged a drama on the Bishnois, bellwether IT company Infosys held an awareness drive (the most cliched sleaze act conducted in the name of environment by the government and others), and others decided to plant saplings (nobody knows which species) and so on. In the media, journalists wrote stories that still reflected the "doomsday" scenario cultivated following the Rio Summit in 1992. A few of these articles often contain disparate issues that confound the issue further. Most of these are written with an Utopian fervour and do not lead the reader anywhere.

We Indians need to do more than just this ridiculous awareness drives to save the environment.

Reading blogs

2009-05-13T20:05:00.000+05:30

I was reading Keith Solty's blog for a few days. I realised that if you are following a blogger, you should read the posts right from the start. By doing this, you will get a better sense of the person, topics, interests, and so on. It is easier to connect with the blogger if you follow the blog from the start.

I did find Keith's posts very informative.

Parts of a table

2009-04-12T14:24:00.000+05:30

I was working with lots of tables last week. Information scattered on many pages was rearranged and put on tables for more clarity. Because I was focusing on tables for most part of last week, I decided to dig a bit about tables and their structure.

Broadly, there are two types of tables: Formal and informal. The formal tables are the ones we are familiar with and often encounter in user manuals . Tables that have proper titles and column headings belong to this type. Information in these type of tables can stand on its own. These tables are usually placed closer to the text. I feel the common look-up-a-value table is a an example of a formal table.

Informal or in-line text tables do not have columns or titles. They are part of the text and are self-explanatory. For me, they look a bit odd in documents.

Decision tables allow the user to take a decision and distance tables show data or values related to categories.

Structure of a Table

A table is identified by a brief and a descriptive table title. A few companies strictly follow a guideline that a table should be referenced in text before the appearance of the table. Such a reference in text can also be a hyperlink, even if the table is on the same page.

Headnotes are short notes, a word or two, appearing below the title. They are also set in parentheses (brackets).

Column headings run horizontally and row headings vertically. The stub is the leftmost row. Headings that form the top column are boxheads. If column headings spread across columns, they are called spanner heads or decked heads. If a line or a horizontal rule divides a main column heading and a spanner head, the line is a spanner rule. Spanner heads can be used to avoid repetition.

Tables also have section headings that precede column headings. Cut-in heads are headings that cut across columns in the table. They are also called field spanners.

The body or the field of the table consists of cells below the headings. No cell is left blank in a table. If required, they should be filled with appropriate symbols.

Tables also have footnotes, table notes and source notes. Footnotes are recognised by symbols such as asterisks or daggers. Table notes appear at the end of the table.

From my notes

2009-04-05T13:35:00.001+05:30

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next-Emerson (found in The God Delusion by acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins).

Georges Perec's novel, The Void, is written without the letter "e".

Man is a wretched creature and death is a certainty-Thomas Bernhad

Ella Minnow Pea is a novel written by Mark Dunn. Letters start missing from the chapters in this novel.

All excess is ill, but drunkeness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men-William Penn

Cladogenesis is the way evolution proceeds-by an elaborate and complex series of branching events or episodes of speciation.

From a green perspective

2009-04-05T12:54:00.000+05:30

When did the word “green” came to be widely associated with the environmental movement? In Century of New Words, John Ayto cites examples from 1971. The adjective was used to refer to environmentalists, who were “green” in their approach. In the 1970s, the colour green was associated with the protests against nuclear power stations in Germany, says the author.

It was in the early 90s that I came across this word. The Earth Summit at Rio in 1992 was the driving force. Words like “hotspots,”“sustainable development,” and “recycling” became the buzzwords of the decade. Other terms that become hits included global warming, greenhouse effect, nuclear winter, renewable energy, bioremediation, acid rain, pollution, smog, oil pollution, biodiversity, and extinction. Newspapers splashed several “green” stories and ran campaigns to caution people against the impending environmental doom. Green organisations and politicians brought green issues to the public arena by pitting development against the environment. Many made careers out of the "disaster scenarios" by starting non-governmental organisations and trusts.

Greenwashing

The word used to describe the recession-triggered enthusiasm for things green is “greenwashing.” Announcements by companies that they are going green are just PR spin.

Staycation

I like the word "staycation" because it justifies what I would love to do on weekends. Relax at home watching the TV, or reading a novel, or reading back issues of newspapers. If a large number decides to enjoy staycation, the environment will be the biggest beneficiaries.

I have always thought the days when bandhs and hartals are organised in India are the best ones to study air pollution. Vehicles will not be out on the road fearing stone throwing and violence by protesters. There will be a huge difference in the levels of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and suspended particulate matter (SPM) in those days when the streets will be empty. Are pollution researchers listening?

Words that drive me mad

2009-02-22T12:24:00.000+05:30

I feel like thrashing my desktop or banging my head against the wall on seeing the following words in user documents and emails:

On approval or once approved
Bolded
Revert back
Impacted

The problem with the first word is if the user has to do an action after a particular step or authorisation, I can write, "After xyz task, ...". Why should the word "once" be used?

In the printing industry, the word "bold" stands for "boldface". It is a character or type set in boldface. According to a printing glossary, "Bold is a type that appears darker than the next type of the same typeface." The adjectives are bolder and boldest, and not bolded.

Technical writers can use make bold or set to bold instead of bolded that gives a puking sensation.

The same applies to impacted. Even though, this is a popular , I will substitute it with another word or rewrite the sentence.

I do not know who discovered the expression "revert back" as a synonym for "reply". I have seem numerous instances of this wrong expression in emails. Check the meaning at dictionary.com.

Will Slumdog Millionaire make it?

2009-01-24T22:37:00.000+05:30

I chanced upon this article on the BBC website. While I have not yet seen the film, the article as well as the responses were interesting.

I did not understand the word dog in the movie title. Nor did I understood why that particular word appeared or was approved as the movie title. History has many examples. When Kapil Dev's cricket team started winning matches against the much feared teams in the Prudential World Cup in 1983, they were called Kapil's Devils. Similarly, Gavaskar and Sachin were called as Little Masters. May be I am wrong or I am reading too much into things.

Best Books of 2008

2009-01-24T22:19:00.000+05:30

Slate picks up the best of 2008.

New York Time's 10 Best Books of 2008.

Salon's best books of 2008.

Time magazine selects Roberto Bolano's novel as the best in 2008.

Lastly, the best from the bible of literary criticism, TLS.

Types of Headlines- a bit old fashioned

2009-01-18T13:48:00.000+05:30

The following classification of newspaper headlines is based on my journalism notes. They are from the point of page layout.

Flush Left-Headlines that are aligned to the left margin of the page.
Step-A headline of two or three lines with the top one flushed to the left and the last one to the right.
Inverted Pyramid-Headline arranged in the form of an inverted pyramid.
Hanging Indention-Headline flushed to the right of the page, except the first line.
Kicker-Headline of two parts with one line in a smaller font size and in a different type family than the others.
Overline-Headline with a smaller supporting line aligned to the middle at the top.
Underline- Kicker in reverse.
Hammer-A kicker reversely arranged.Usually a Hammer has two or three words with bigger headline at the top.
Combination-A headline that combines any of the above types.
New Pattern-Headlines that combine new patterns and artwork.

A quote from Milan Kundera

2009-01-18T13:04:00.000+05:30

"By writing books, the individual becomes a universe. And since the principal quality of the universe is its uniquness, the existence of another universe constitutes a threat to its very existence."

The Art of Fiction

2009-01-18T11:50:00.000+05:30

I read the The Art of Fiction by David Lodge in the early 90s. I was very much impressed by the book, which gave an insight into the world of literature. I did keep notes while reading the book and today I decided to put a list of books recommended by the author in various chapters.

The books include the following:

Defamiliarisation-Villete-Charlotte Bronte. For more on defamiliarisation, click here.
Interior Monologue-Ulysses-James Joyce
Intrusive Author-Adame Bede (George Orwell), Howard's End (E M Forster), As Good as Gold (Joseph Heller)
Suspense-A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy)
Skaz-The Catcher in the Rye-J D Salinger. Skaz
Epistolary Novels-Pamela and Clarissa (Samuel Richardson), Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen), The Trick of It (Michael Frayn)
Mystery Novels-Wilkie Collin's novels, Heart of Darkness(Joseph Conrad), The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) and Mrs. Bathurst (Rudyard Kipling).
Names-The author says that names are never neutral in fiction. To understand this, read How Far you can go and Nice Work by David Lodge.
The Stream of Consciousness-Phrase coined by William James, brother of Henry James. Read Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf).
Lists-Describes the purchase of luxury items by the heroines-by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Surprise-From Aristotle's "Peripetia". Read Vanity Fair by William Thackeray.
Time Shift-Slaughter House Five (Kurt Vonnegut), Time's Arrow (Martin Amis) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark).
Repetition-Novels of D H Lawrence
Fancy Prose-Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), Eupheus: The Anatomy of Wit (by John Lyly).
Intertextuality-Ulysses
The Experimental Novel-Term coined by Emile Zola. Read novels by Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Loving (Henry Green).
Comic Novel-Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)
Magic Realism-Nights at the Circus (Angela Carter), Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson), The Book of Laughter (Milan Kundera).
Staying on the Surface-Robinson Crusoe, The History Man (Malcom Bradbury)
Showing and Telling-Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)
Telling in Different Voices-Female Friends (Fay Weldon). Also called "polyphony or alternatively dialogism" by Mikhail Bakhtin.
A sense of the Past- The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles).
Imagining the Future-1984 (Orwell)
Symbolism-Women in Love (D H Lawrence)
Allegory-The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan), Erewhon (Samuel Butler).
Epiphany-John Updike
Unreliable Narrative-The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
The Exotic-Novels of Graham Greene.
Surrealism-The Hearing Trumpet (Leonara Carrington)
Irony-The Old Wive's Tale (Arnold Benett)
Ideas-Novels of Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Dostovesky, Sartre.
Metafiction- Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne), John Barth, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges.
Aporia-Samuel Beckett
The Ending-Pincher Martin by William Golding
Point of View-What Massie Knew (Henry James)

Environmentalism and Lifestyle

2009-01-18T09:40:00.000+05:30

If you believe that the IT industry is a 'clean' industry, it is time to be bitten by the reality. Read the following intro in a newspaper:

"While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g," says a Times report.To read the report, click here.

While the Americans have started to think about car-pooling and green fuel, what are we doing here? We are ashamed to take the public transport. Is not it?

"We are so used to our comfortable way of life. It is much easier for us to drive ourselves to work instead of tacking 10 minutes on to our commute by taking public transportation.

It is much easier for us to do things on our own schedule, instead of offering to carpool with friends or co-workers and maybe being slightly inconvenienced by waiting for five minutes," says an article in The Republican.

User Stories and Use Cases

2009-01-11T15:01:00.000+05:30

In discussions, I hear the words "user stories" and 'use cases" used interchangeably. This wikipedia link details what exactly a user story is.

Wiki explains User Case.

Ten Technical Communication Myths

2008-09-09T12:31:00.000+05:30

Geoff Hart rips apart the myths in technial writing. Great post.

Improving technical documentation

2008-09-09T12:14:00.000+05:30

Technical writers all over the world are debating on how new approaches and processes can dramatically improve the quality of the documentation produced.

A few suggest that Usability testing, even with limited resources, can add value to the documentation you produce. Other suggest moving documentation to the Web 2.0 model for ease of use and adopting agile documentation. There are people who cite Google's example of comic documentation when they released their new browser, the Chrome.

Daniel Brolund suggests User Guide driven documentation where a snippet of the user guide describing a new feature is prepared. This is an interesting idea in that the techncial writers get a chance to become involved in the documentation process at the initial stages of software development itself. Click here to read Daniel's post.

Comics as technical writing

2008-09-05T17:11:00.000+05:30

Google while unleashing its new browser Chrome, has created another great stuff. It's a comic book about the browse.

Check it out at http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/2

Is Gmail safe?

2008-07-18T14:51:00.000+05:30

I was left wondering with this question as I read the following articles:

Finding the name behind the gmail address

A Question of Programming Ethics

An introduction to Cloud Computing

2008-07-18T14:23:00.000+05:30

Cloud computing is nothing but utilizing supercomputer power to perform complicated tasks over the Internet. (I understood this much thanks to Business Week.

The article says “Cloud computing aims to apply that kind of power—measured in the tens of trillions of computations per second—to problems like analyzing risk in financial portfolios, delivering personalized medical information, even powering immersive computer games, in a way that users can tap through the Web. It does that by networking large groups of servers that often use low-cost consumer PC technology, with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them.”

Express Computer throws more light by saying that “The key feature of cloud computing is that both the software and the information held in it live on centrally located servers rather than on a end-user’s computer.” “…The architecture behind cloud computing is a massive network of ‘cloud servers’ interconnected as if in a grid running in parallel, sometimes using the technique of virtualization to maximize compute power per server.”

“Clouds will become dynamic components of enterprise and research grids, adding an "external" dimension of business flexibility by enhancing their home capacity whenever needed, on demand,” writes Wolfgang Gentzsch in GridToday. He maintains that Grid computing will stay as they will become more cloud like. That, he says, looks promising.

Infoworld explains cloud computing with examples such as SaaS (software as a service), Utility computing, MSP (managed service providers), and Service commerce platforms.

What about security of data and the data centers? “SWIFT, a bank-transfer consortium, has announced plans to build a data centre in neutral Switzerland, so that data collected in Europe will not be stored in an American facility, where it could be subpoenaed by the United States government,” writes The Economist.

Links for Cloud Computing:
Wikipedia
New to grid computing - IBM

Modern classic in the making?

2008-07-16T12:02:00.000+05:30

Like the greatest practitioner of the art, Thomas Mann, Daniel Kehlmann is a master of irony, deftly subverting the expectations of the reader, writes Daniel Johnson about Kehlman's novel Measuring the World. Read the article in The Telegraph.

Create demos, online presentations with ViewletBuilder

2008-07-03T16:08:00.000+05:30

While reading an STC newsletter, I found that folks at Oracle use a tool called Qarbon ViewletBuilder. This was a piece of news for me. After a bit of browsing, I found that the tool can be used to create online presentations, demos, and e-learning modules. Callouts, notes, and audio content can also be added to online presentations created with this tool.

My favourite tech blog Labnol (http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/06/qarbon-viewletbuilder-imagine-power-of.html) says that technical writers untrained in Macromedia Flash authoring environment will find this tool very easy to create Flash presentations. With the ViewletBuilder, all you have to do is to simply move the cursor over the screen captured. The Flash tutorials or simulations created with this tool can be easily previewed. The tool enables your presentations and demos to reach a wider audience than before.

ViewletBuilder works only with Windows and Linux.

Tools for technical writing

2008-07-03T14:10:00.000+05:30

Adobe FrameMaker – Adobe FrameMaker 8 software is a powerful authoring and publishing solution for technical communicators and an essential upgrade for existing FrameMaker users who want to author and publish technical documentation in multiple languages, says Adobe. It supports Unicode, rich media, DITA and single sourcing.

RoboHelp - The most sought after Help authoring tool (HAT). RoboHelp 7 now supports Unicode, translational workflow, importing Word files, importing FrameMaker files and styles, user defined variables, and powerful collaboration.

Microsoft Word – Needs no explanation. Unstable for big documents.

Interleaf – Competitor of FrameMaker. Wikipedia says Interleaf provides an integrated set of tools for creating compound documents: word processing, graphics, data-driven business charts, tables, equations, image editing, automated page layout, book building-- including automatic index and table of contents, and conditional document assembly.

Arbortext - XML-based publishing system, says Wiki. It now supports Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) based eLearning.

WebWorks Publisher – Another platform for single sourcing the content created. Supports FrameMaker and Word. WebWorks includes pre-defined templates for 11 different output formats. It is not a HAT.

Adobe Illustrator- Vector based drawing tool.

Photoshop – Editing software for graphics.

SnagIt - An easy-to-use screen capture and editing tool.

Why editing cannot be just proofreading

2008-07-02T16:34:00.000+05:30

Many people think that proofreading is just another word for editing. Some believe that it can be classified as another type of editing. They will argue that both essentially mean the same. It is unfortunate to see people from the publishing as well as the media industry holding the same opinion about the topic.

The only answer to the controversy is to put the facts straight.

The word “proof” in printing means a kind of a test sheet or draft that is checked for text and graphics and colors before going to the press or publishing. This proof is created after all the editing has been completed. The proof created is also checked for grammar, punctuation, and corrections are marked with standard proofreading marks. This “proof reading” can be termed as the last stage of the editing process. It is never a part of the actual editing process or copy editing.

Editing, on the other hand, starts the moment you receive the first draft or manuscript. If it is a document, it is checked for the content, organization, structure, unity, development of ideas, paragraph structure, etc. The document is checked to see whether it is complete in all its respects and whether it has clarity. It is also checked for the style, correct grammar, word usage, punctuation, citation, copyright issues, and impact.

To conclude, editing is a more in-depth process that looks at the completeness of the entire document. Proofreading is more of a mechanical process that checks the spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Basics of computer languages

2008-06-18T14:30:00.000+05:30

Machine Languages-The language of the CPU (The central processing unit of the computer, which does the "thinking"). The lowest level language, this is composed of 0's and 1's.

Assembly Languages-Abbreviations for machine language

High-Level Languages-Use program statements, words and algebra-type expressions. Developed in the 50's and 60's.

After a program is written in one of the high-level languages, it must be either compiled or interpreted.

A compiler program rewrites the program into language that the CPU can understand. A compiled program is generally considerably larger than the original.

An interpreter program translates the program statements into machine language one line at a time when the program runs. An interpreted program will be smaller than a compiled one, but will take longer to execute.

Fourth Generation Language (4GL)-Very high-level language. These are results oriented and include database query languages. There are fewer options for programmers, but the programs are much easier to write than in lower level languages. These too must be compiled or interpreted.

Natural Languages-5th Generation Languages-Not yet. Experts believe that in such a language statements look like normal sentences.

My list of idioms

2008-06-16T13:58:00.000+05:30

This list does not explain common idioms.

Face the axe
An axe to grind
Achilles heel
Apple of somebody’s eye – A person or thing that is loved more than others.
Apple-pie (order)
To make amends
Up in arms – Ready to fight
Back to back – In succession
On the back burner
Bad blood between (A) and (B)
Blood and thunder – Violent and melodramatic acting in films…
Blood, sweat and tears – Extremely hard work
Draw blood
Bank on something/somebody – Rely on
Bear the brunt of –
Bear fruit – to bring out a result, usually a successful one
Bear on sb/something-
Beat
Tighten one’s belt
20. Tighten up on sth-to become more careful or strict
21. Walk a tightrope –
22. Blow one’s own trumpet –
23. To break the ice –
24. To bury the hatchet
25. To build castles in the air –
26. To take the bull by the horns –
27. Burn one’s fingers -
28. Cheek by jowl
29. Cock-and-bull story
30. To shed crocodile tears
31. To cry wolf
32. Cut short
33. Cut out for
34. Daggers drawn – Strained relations
35. Dead letter – a law or practice that is generally ignored
36. Turn a deaf ear
37. Die out
38. Dovetail – To combine together neatly
39. To eat humble pie
40. To take effect
41. Elbow room
42. Ex parte
43. Take exception to something
44. The exception proves the rule
45. Eyewash
46. To face the music
47. Full flat
48. To fall short of
49. The fat is in the fire
50. To play second fiddle
51. To fish in troubled waters
52. Flesh and blood – Human nature
53. To follow suit
54. Food for thought
55. Foul play
56. From hand-to-mouth
57. Hand-in-hand
58. To throw down the gauntlet
59. To get the better of
60. Gift of the gab – talent for speaking
61. To give in
62. To give a slip
63. To give full vent to
64. To cast a gloom over
65. Hand in glove
66. Ground
67. Grist to one’s/somebody’s mill
68. Hatch a plot
69. With a heavy hand
70. To wash one’s hands off
71. To haul over the coals
72. Herculean task
73. To hit the nail on the head
74. Hobson’s choice
75. Hocus pocus
76. In Hot waters – In trouble
77. To cut no ice
78. In a nut shell
79. In lieu of
80. Gordian knot
81. Once in a blue moon
82. Caught napping
83. To pay through the nose
84. Piece of cake
85. Pull the plug on sb/sth
86. A quirk of fate
87. Rankle with sth/sb – to cause bitter or angry feelings
88. Break the mould of sth –
89. Stick it out
90. Cleft stick
91. Big stick
92. Carrot and stick
93. Back the wrong horse
94. Take a stick
95. Give sb stck
96. a stick to beat somebody/something
97. The world is one’s oyster
98. Come to a bad/sticky end
99. Thin end of the wedge
100. Blind alley
101. Blind spot
102. Sheer away from something
103. Send somebody/something up
104. go through the pace
105. over the fence – unreasonable or unacceptable
106. Sixes and sevens
107. tooth and nail – Very fiercely, with all power
108. Splitting hairs – Disputing over petty issues
109. Strom in a tea cup
110. Sour grapes
111. Via media – middle way
112. Pin-head – a stupid person
113. Shoot your mouth off
114. …to the letter
115. keep to/follow the letter of the law
116. cry-baby
117. tittle-tattle
118. Chew the fat
119. goo-goo
120. grid-lock
121. hot-button
122. Smoking gun – indisputable evidence or proof as of a crime or misdeed.
123. down-shift
124. right-size
125. on-side
126. at someone’s beck and call
127. plug-and-play
128. open-collar job
129. mumbo-jumbo
130. pickled
131. put to the sword
132. Sword of Damocles
133. Neck of the woods
134. Bite the dust –
135. Bite sb’s head off
136. Bite off more than one can chew
137. In the pink of health/condition
138. Pink-eye
139. Shrinking violet
140. A yellow streak
141. The fat is in the fire
142. Fat of the land
143. Don’t get a wink of sleep
144. One-horse town
145. pick-out
146. run-down
147. snap-up
148. Bon-mot
149. Pull someone’s legs
150. Fill/fit the bill
151. Iron out something
152. Keep sb/so on tenterhooks
153. wishy-washy (pap, treacle)
154. slap-dash
155. chapter-and-verse
156. Hocus-pocus
157. poppy-cock (nonsense)
158. jim-jams – feeling of extreme nervousness
159. a throw
160. tick-off
161. get somebody’s goat – greatly irritate or annoy someone
162. whistle-blower
163. whistle-stop tour
164. hog the roads
165. cleave to
166. hard as nails
167. hard-boiled
168. hard-headed
169. hard-luck story
170. hard-nosed
171. butt in
172. quick on the uptake
173. harum-scarum
174. hot-potato
175. hot ticket
176. tack on
177. hatchet-faced
178. Read the riot act - Reprimand rowdy characters and warn them to stop behaving badly.
179. Know your onions - To be experienced in or knowledgeable about a subject
180. Stool pigeon - A decoy bird, or a police informer, or criminal's look-out or decoy.
181. True blue - Loyal and unwavering in one's opinions or support for a cause
182. Tuckered out – Exhausted
183. A sledgehammer to crack a nut -'Using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut' is using disproportionate force or expense to overcome a minor problem.
184. On the wagon - abstaining from alcohol. 'Off the wagon' - returned to drinking after an attempt to give it up.
185.

What is a defective verb?

2008-06-13T11:43:00.000+05:30

For answers, please click here.

When to use commas to separate adjectives

2008-06-13T11:32:00.000+05:30

Today, I had an interesting discussion with my colleague about the use of comma to separate adjectives. Finally, we decided to search the Internet for answers. This is what we got:

""When a noun is preceded by two or more adjectives that could, without affecting the meaning, be joined by and, the adjectives are normally separated by commas. But if the noun and the adjective immediately preceding it are conceived as a unit, such as little girl,' 'political science,' or 'glass ceiling,' no comma should be used." (The Chicago Manual of Style).

That settled everything.

Specific absorption rate

2008-06-13T10:38:00.000+05:30

The term "specific absorption rate" is not from Physics or Chemistry. FCC defines it as the "amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the body when using a mobile phone." Got it?

CNET has reviewed the SARs of all the leading mobile phone manufacturers and has presented a list of top 10 phones with the least SARs. Check it out.

Capitalization after colon

2008-06-13T10:23:00.000+05:30

Should the first letter after a colon be capitalized or not? Is it an American usage or British usage?

LanguageLog replies to the accusation that the American usage is wrong by quoting examples.

Does the word 'number' take a singular or plural_verb?

2008-05-30T12:16:00.000+05:30

Find out the answer to the question here.

Ten Common Writing Mistakes Your Spell Checker Won’t Find

2008-05-29T17:13:00.000+05:30

Check this Wordpress link

Tips to speed up the PC

2008-05-28T18:58:00.000+05:30

Check this link http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/04/12/slow_computer_speed_up_your.htm to speed up the PC.

http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx

http://www.speedupyourcomputer.windowsreinstall.com/index.htm

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/article/registry_cleaner_why.htm

My dictionary of words

2008-05-28T18:22:00.000+05:30

power trip (n) Slang - An action undertaken chiefly for the gratification associated with the exercise of power over another or others.

Grok: verb (used with object) 1. to understand thoroughly and intuitively.
–verb (used without object) 2. to communicate sympathetically.(Dictionary.com)

deracination (n) deracinate (v): Uprooted, alienated from the native culture or environemnt.
Along with Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini, the Haiti-born Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz from the Dominican Republic, Lahiri swells a tide of new fictional voices: immigrants, who write about displacement and deracination. (The Independent)

Doodad: Ornamemtal attachment.
Tours have become a way to market the artist as a brand, with the fan clubs, limited-edition doodads, and other profitable products and services that come with the territory.

To bandy words: A phrase meaning to argue persistently.

Silver bullet (phrase): Direct and effortless solution to a problem.

garboil (noun): Confusion; turmoil.

tartuffe (noun): A hypocrite who feigns virtue, especially in religious matters.

asyndeton (noun): Omission of conjunctions, as in "I came, I saw, I conquered."

verbigeration (noun): Obsessive repetition of meaningless words and phrases.

The following words are from http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/newwords/?view=uk

abdominoplasty n. Medicine a surgical operation involving the removal of excess flesh from the abdomen.

bahookie n. Scottish a person's buttocks. origin 1930s: prob. a blend of behind and hough + -ie.

best of breed (phrase) any item or product considered to be the best of its kind.

blowback n. 2. chiefly US, the unintended adverse results of a political action or situation.

celebutante n. a celebrity who is well known in fashionable society.– origin 1930s: blend of celebrity and debutante.

crunk n. a type of hip-hop or rap music characterized by repeated shouted catchphrases and elements typical of electronic dance music, such as prominent bass.
adj. US, chiefly black slang (of a person) very excited or full of energy.
– origin 1990s: perh. an alt. past part. of crank1 or a blend of crazy and drunk.

hardscape n. chiefly US the man-made features used in landscape architecture, e.g. paths or walls, as contrasted with vegetation.– derivatives
hardscaping n.

hoody (also hoodie) n. · informal a person, especially a youth, wearing a hooded top.
– origin 1960s: of unknown origin.

mentee n. a person who is advised, trained, or counselled by a mentor.

mesotherapy n. (in cosmetic surgery) a procedure in which multiple tiny injections of pharmaceuticals, vitamins, etc. are delivered into the mesodermal layer of tissue under the skin, to promote the loss of fat or cellulite.

obesogenic adj. tending to cause obesity.

plank n. Brit. informal a stupid person.

radge Scottish informal n. a wild, crazy, or violent person. adj. wild, crazy, or violent. – origin 1920s: appar. an alt. of rage.

rendition n. 3. (also extraordinary rendition) (especially in the US) the practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners.

retronym n. a new term created from an existing word in order to distinguish the original referent of the existing word from a later one that is the product of progress or technological development (e.g. acoustic guitar for guitar).– origin 1980s: blend of retro- and -onym.

riffage n. informal guitar riffs, especially in rock music.

shoulder-surfing n. the practice of spying on the user of a cash-dispensing machine or other electronic device in order to obtain their personal identification number, password, etc.

SIPP n. (in the UK) a self-invested personal pension, a pension plan that enables the holder to choose and manage the investments made.

therapize or therapise v. subject to psychological therapy: you don't need to therapize or fix each other.

tri-band adj. (of a mobile phone) having three frequencies, enabling it to be used in different regions (typically Europe and the US).

twonk n. Brit. informal a stupid or foolish person.
– origin 1980s: perh. a blend of twit1 or twat and plonker.

upskill v. [often as noun upskilling] teach (an employee) additional skills.
· (of an employee) learn additional skills.

wedge issue n. US a very divisive political issue, regarded as a basis for drawing voters away from an opposing party whose supporters have diverging opinions on it.

Yogalates (also trademark Yogilates) n. a fitness routine that combines Pilates exercises with the postures and breathing techniques of yoga. – origin 1990s: blend of yoga and Pilates.

zombie n. a computer controlled by a hacker without the owner's knowledge, which is made to send large quantities of data to a website, making it inaccessible to other users.

Diagram is also a transitive verb

2008-05-15T13:15:00.000+05:30

The noun diagram is also a transitive verb. Check Merriam Webster.

How not to teach database design

2008-05-11T18:55:00.000+05:30

Techncial writers, please read this post.

I am of the opinion that users don't read 90 percent of the help files and user guides.

Any comments?

Indian techies snubbing US jobs to stay home

2008-04-30T12:32:00.000+05:30

Indian techies snubbing US jobs to stay home, says ZDNET.

Writing and editing articles

2008-03-31T14:56:00.000+05:30

Ten Tips for Effective Editing

Tips and tricks for checking grammar and spelling in Microsoft Word

Mistakes your word processor won't catch

Comma vs semicolon exercises