What I learned from a month of Facebook Live
In October 2016, I took up the Content Marketing Academy’s challenge to create a Facebook Live video for each day of the month. So, 31 days, 31 videos. No mean feat.
The royal order of adjectives
It’s funny how native speakers of English have that sense of what sounds right and what doesn’t. Even though we can’t always explain why, we often know when there’s something wrong with the way a piece of text is written.
Pricing: a question of trust
Would you, a potential consumer, trust a service provider who didn’t give any indication of their price on their website? That’s the question I asked my friends and here are the answers I got back. I’ve split them into pros and cons.
The Tao of Twitter: an experiment
I’ve worked as an independent technical writer since the end of 2009. I’m fortunate to have a career I enjoy: I get to take part in varied, interesting projects, and the words I write help people get stuff done. That’s all awesome. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to raise my profile. How […]
How do technical writers charge?
Freelance technical writers are usually charge using one of the following pricing models:
Do technical writers need to do research?
Here’s part 3 of my series on technical writing prices. This time, I look at the research that technical writers have to do before they can produce any useful content.
Preferred spellings in technical writing
Here’s a quick round-up of a poll I ran about technical writers’ preferences for common computing terms. I write for a predominantly British audience in UK English, but I sometimes have to use computing terms, which are usually written in American English (probably because of style guides such as the Microsoft Manual of Style). That […]
Pen portraits: understanding your ideal audience
Have you ever read a piece of writing that feels as though it were created just for you? The author of that text will have thought about the audience – what they would need to know and how they should be made to feel about it. This is the essence of good, persuasive writing. This […]
Why is technical writing so expensive?
This is the second post in my “technical writing prices” series. Last time, I looked at how much technical writing costs. This time, I’ll explain why technical writing can be so expensive. Here are 10 reasons to explain why freelance technical writers charge what seems to be a lot of money.
How much does technical writing cost?
How much does technical writing and technical copywriting cost? In this post, I provide my own figures and point to data from the annual pay survey conducted by the Professional Copywriters’ Network (PCN). Summary for busy people The PCN’s 2019 survey puts the average day rate for copywriting at £349. My day rate is .
Digital 2016 – the big write-up
On the 6th and 7th of June 2016, I attended Digital 2016 – a free conference organised by Innovation Point, which took place at the 5-star Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, South Wales. This event offered a chance to meet some of the brightest digital talents in the local area and beyond, and to listen […]
Dropbox sharing: 3 false assumptions
“You can’t move, rename or delete things in Dropbox without messing everything up” – NOT TRUE This post dispels 3 common myths about shared folders in Dropbox.
How do you say these typeface names?
I’m no typographer but I do like a nice typeface – and I appreciate it when people pronounce typeface names correctly. Hardly the most pressing matter you’ll ever encounter, but hey.
Why Dropbox rocks
We’ve all heard the mantra: make sure you perform regular backups of your data. Most of us have some sort of backup regime. How good is yours?
Secret Mac toolbar shortcut
Whenever I’m busy working on a project, I often find myself regularly referring to a small group of files. It might be a style guide, a client brief or a general crib sheet. I don’t like to interrupt my stream of thought too much, so it’s important to me that such files are easily accessible. […]
iPad Pro Smart Keyboard: first impressions
Having recently bought an iPad Pro, I couldn’t resist the temptation of pairing it up with the new Smart Keyboard. Apple took their time to make the unit available for delivery, but now it’s here I thought I’d share some notes about my early experiences with it. Was it worth the money? Read on […]
Reclaim disk space on your Mac
Having recently almost filled my iMac’s hard disk, I needed a way to free up some disk space. But where to start?
RGB and HEX colours
You’re probably aware that when it comes to computers, colours are represented by a series of numbers. In this post, John Espirian explains two of the most common colour systems used on the web. RGB and HEX are colour systems used on the web There are lots of colour systems available, but the two mentioned […]
Powerline
If you’ve ever had WiFi problems at home with either your desktop or laptop computer, you may well have longed for some other way to get online and stay online. These days, WiFi is a necessity in many homes – anyone who has a smartphone or tablet knows that. But what if you’ve got a […]
What is my IP address?
If you’ve ever had a problem accessing a service on the internet and have then had to seek out help, you might have been asked to supply your IP address.