High-tech publications need old-fashioned editing

Standard formats, familiar word choices, consistency, organization, simple graphic formats, technology, mechanics, and the global nature of the user and the media are major considerations that are often ignored when producing high-tech publications. Oversights and errors are usually corrected in print publications with conventional editing as a step in the production process. However, the authors noticed during a recent Society for Technical Communications chapter publications competition that many creators of Web sites, online help, and other electronic publications appear to skip the editing step when producing their documents. Applying old-fashioned editing techniques such as following a style guide, proofreading, testing links, and trying to look at a document with a fresh perspective could have made these publications winners.