My Tech Writing

My entire career has been tech writing and editing. I began as a nonfiction publishing editor where I manipulated tables and indexes, moved into teaching high school English and business where I created technical instructions and assignments, and finally arrived as a marketing communications manager where I write and edit informational content for the company website as well as all printed brochures on our season offerings and class lists.

The How to Make Pie site alongside its oXygen file.

Basic DITA Setup using oXygen on How to Make Pies. Seems pies aren't as hard to make as you might think! Made for my master's class WRIT 5662: Writing with Digital Technologies.

Pippin's First Journey Website alongside Visual Studio Code editor file.

Our first major assignment in Writing with Digital technologies was using Visual Studio Code, HTML, and CSS to make a webpage using any content we desired. I had just had a rather emotional journey with the birth of my first child: Peregrine, who we call Pippin. But his journey was more wild than my own as he had to be rushed across state borders to Children's Hospital to help clear out his lungs.

The R file used for this single sourcing project.

For this assignment, we were to use R to create any webpage using single sourcing principles. I was in the process of proposing a new compensation plan for the Phipps, so I used that for the content. (It worked, by the way!)

Map of the Phipps building with nine Community Day events listed and color-coded by type (art, music, dance, theater).

Who says technical documents are only online? Event maps need to be just as usable as anything online...if not moreso! For the Phipps Center for the Art's new Community Day event, I was asked to make an easy-to-read map and schedule to make a complex day simple.

The Adobe Acrobat file for a season brochure with comments by Brian on the side.

Editing is one of the most important parts of a document's lifecycle. This brochure had to be created quickly, and I wasn't incorporated into its early stages. Because of this, I had to balance grammatical principles from MLA and Chicago Manual of Style with the need for speed. Therefore, my suggestions were based around consistency more than correctness (as much as that broke my heart).