September 2018
Beginner
70 pages
1h 25m
English
Content preview from Technical Writing for Business People
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
5 ASSUME NOTHING
Assumptions are bad for technical writing. Just because you know something doesn’t mean that the reader does.
If we write content based on the assumption that our reader knows something and our reader doesn’t, then our content could be completely incomprehensible to them.
The big danger of assumptions is that if the reader doesn’t know or doesn’t fully understand what you’re talking about, then the information you’re trying to pass on won’t be passed on.
MAKING ASSUMPTIONS
Here’s a great example. If you show a photograph of a floppy disk to young people, many of them will think you’re showing them a photo of a 3D-printed ‘Save’ icon. They’re too young to have encountered floppies.
It’s a funny story, and true. But I’m also ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.