July 21st – 25th

This week started with a developer named Sergey reviewing my new roles documentation for technical correctness. He pointed out to me that the way I had described one function “editing a role” was incorrect. He explained to me that the “editing a role” function did not work the way most people (even people at Siemens PLM Software) thought it would.

After making the appropriate changes to the documentation after meeting with Sergey, it was time for another tech writer to peer review my work. I asked Carey to do this (he sits in my row of cubicles). After a while we got together and he showed me the changes he would have made to one page and sent me on my way to edit the rest of the pages with that page as an example. Carey emphasized that an efficient use of language is very important. He told me that fewer words and more graphics encourage readers to finish the whole document and not just skim through it. He also explained to me that each word carries with it a certain dollar amount because every document must be translated or “localized” into a handful of different languages and so technical writers must learn to omit unnecessary words and phrases. After I made the changes that Carey suggested, I emailed the documentation to our editor, Swarna. I should be hearing back from her at the beginning of the next week.

Other than reviewing and editing the roles documentation, I worked on a couple of small side projects. Gregg wanted a place for the members of TDOC to pose questions or suggestions that would be easily accessible. At the time they were just using a word document located in a shared location that individuals could check out and then check back in after they had made their changes. We decided that it would be a good idea to create a discussion forum to replace this process. Instead of creating a whole new forum, we were able to add a separate section dedicated to the TDOC team in another teams pre-existing forum.

Another side project that Gregg had me work on was editing the TDOC homepage. Like I mentioned in an earlier entry, the company I am interning for has changed names and corporations a lot. The TDOC homepage had not been edited most recent change, so there was a lot of old terminology and content that needed to be changed.

So far the internship has been a great experience; however, I wish that I would get at least one more actual writing project to work on before I go. I’ve talked to Gregg about this and he is trying to find me, and the rest of the TDOC team, content to start writing but since the company is in sort of a transition period (changing their focus from the recent release to the upcoming one) this is difficult for him.