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Subject:re: Quality checks in a techwriting project From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 May 2002 07:57:08 -0700 (PDT)
Shilpi K. Kedia wrote:
How do we monitor quality in a technical writing project? I could think
of using style templates & reviews.
-----------------
Well, that depends on a number of things, including:
* Medium used to produce the project (electronic, print, other)
* Goals of the project, type of information you are trying to convey (procedural, reference, conceptual, instructional)
* Audience, which is closely tied to your goals (for example, if you're writing to newbies, you'll want to make sure the language and information included is written _for_ newbies)
* Known issues involving the media and goals of your project (such as linking in an online help project to related topics, or index entries in print)
* Error frequency you're trying to attain through your qa procedure
* Issues you want to address during your QA (such as spelling, guidelines conformance, linking, pagination, cleanliness of graphics, etc)
* Available time and personnel (set realisitic goals based on the amount of time you have to conduct your QA and the number of people you have. You may not have the resources to do a QA run on a project, you may have to make a stronger effort during production to reduce the number of errors)
* Company's culture, expectations and needs
Each of these issues will determine what your QA procedure should be and what you'll be checking each time you conduct a QA. Some ways to maintain a level of quality during production are:
* _clear_ definition of the purpose of the project
* _clear_ definition of the issues you want to control, such as spelling or word usage
* enforceable guidelines
* enforceable and useable template
* wrtiers who are informed about the guidelines and purpose of the project
* technical edit by SMEs
* content edit by an editor
* persistance
* consistency
Hope that helps. :-)
********************************************
Sean Hower
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