The Society for Technical Communication is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication. It is the largest organization of its type in the world. Its 25,000 members include technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, academics, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, Web designers and developers, and translators - anyone whose work makes technical information available to those who need it.

The STC Toronto Chapter was founded in 1959 (then the Society of Technical Writers) and is the largest chapter in Canada.

About this Newsletter:

Emphasis on Success
by Barry Clegg

One of the hardiest products to emerge from the long evolution of business practices in the Western world is the Management Report. This is a document widely used to pump periodic accounts of departmental activities outward and upward through the management structure. It serves also to reassure readers that you (the author) are still alive, gainfully employed, and making progress.

Because of the stresses and uncertainties inherent in office life, many senior managers have developed a highly refined appreciation for Good News. As a writer of Management Reports it will be to your advantage to bear this in mind. While admittedly not everything which occurs in the business environment actually works to the general corporate advantage, you will be wise to find a way of making it seem so.

If you suspect your talents for writing Management Reports do not do justice to your other managerial skills, you will be interested in the following guidelines.

• The events reported, no matter how regrettable in reality, must appear in an encouraging light. For example, rather than admit your computer’s hard disk failed and a month's data was lost, write: A hard disk failure confirmed the importance of our backup procedures. (This incontestable statement says nothing about whether the procedures were followed.)
  
  
• Likewise, projects must not be late. Reschedule them, postpone them, defer them, or cancel them by mutual agreement with the client, but never let them be late.
  
  
• Do not drop into a too simple style, or credibility will suffer. For example, Current work is involved with determination and finalization of the system requirements simply means We're trying to decide what to do - but how much grander it sounds!
  
  
• Change Holding weekly meetings to Continuing ongoing meetings on a weekly basis. Generally speaking, seven words are better than three.
  
  
• Double your value from an event by mentioning it twice - in anticipation (progressing towards scheduled completion), and later as an actual occurrence (completed as planned).
  
  
• Use statistics to advantage: find some numbers to report on, no matter how insignificant, in order to enhance your reputation for precision and attention to detail. Append a bar chart to demonstrate your command of technology.
  
  
• Bad news if inescapable should be presented in the obscurantist style of Pentagon announcements. Again, for the defective hard disk, consider: Electro-mechanical failure of the fixed disk storage medium in our personal computing hardware resulted in logical inaccessibility of the previous period's statistical history. Notice how the barrage of forceful words (electro-mechanical, fixed, hardware, logical, statistical) deflects attention away from failure and inaccessibility.
  
  
• When the events you are reporting on prove irredeemably disappointing, take the opportunity to give a subordinate an enriching experience. Explain first the significance of Management Reports and writing skills; then delegate.
  
  
• Humour: there is no room for humour in a Management Report.