{"id":3895,"date":"2013-07-26T16:15:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T21:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=3895"},"modified":"2013-07-26T18:09:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T23:09:30","slug":"twitter-thinking-in-tech-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2013\/07\/26\/twitter-thinking-in-tech-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Twitter Thinking&#8217; in Tech Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/imgres17-e1374768316776.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3897\" alt=\"imgres\" src=\"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/imgres17-e1374768316776.jpeg\" width=\"75\" height=\"76\" \/><\/a>My Encore colleague (and proprietor), Dennis Owen, has come up with a neat concept to trim up technical writing \u2013 apply a little &#8220;Twitter technique&#8221; to documentation. Twitter on documents? Come on&#8230;but wait, what&#8217;s he getting at?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yesterday I was editing a procedure from one of my colleagues (at a company Dennis is currently working at) and he had some bullets in a long list of an organization&#8217;s responsibilities, like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Perform system troubleshooting<\/li>\n<li>Completing required surveillances<\/li>\n<li>Equipment repairs and replacements<\/li>\n<li>Creating backup copies by copying plant equipment files<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some might say this is \u00a0trim enough. But wait, if we give the list a &#8220;Twitter touch,&#8221; here&#8217;s what Dennis suggests it might look like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>System troubleshooting<\/li>\n<li>Surveillance<\/li>\n<li>Repairs and replacements<\/li>\n<li>File backup<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is what an old city editor of mine would have called &#8220;tight writing,&#8221; and it&#8217;s a definite improvement in reading efficiency. But who has a city editor anymore? Instead, a Twitter-like technique is worth keeping in mind. Yes, a character count, figuratively speaking. There are 129 characters (or so) in the first list and 62 (or so) in the second. Both are within Twitter&#8217;s 140-character limit, but which is more efficient to read, and probably remember? Clearly, the second.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not recommending that you count the characters in everything you write \u2013 that would be daunting. But if you picture yourself as tweeting, rather than merely writing, maybe my old city editor enters your ken, and that would be a blessing, indeed! \u00a0Over time, your writing will be immeasurably improved \u2013 that is, will become clearer and more efficient to read.<\/p>\n<p>So, the next time you tackle a technical document, get up there on a power line and tweet on! Your writing and, your readers&#8217; grasp of \u00a0whatever procedure is involved, will be energized. Truly. \u2013 <em>Doug Bedell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Encore colleague (and proprietor), Dennis Owen, has come up with a neat concept to trim up technical writing \u2013 apply a little &#8220;Twitter technique&#8221; to documentation. Twitter on documents? Come on&#8230;but wait, what&#8217;s he getting at? &#8220;Yesterday I was editing a procedure from one of my colleagues (at a company Dennis is currently working [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-technology","category-the-writing-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3932,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}