A Guide to Publishing User Manuals

Technical Communication A Total A-to-Z guide to creating professional-quality user manuals on time, on budget--on your PC You don't need to pay an outside specialist a small fortune to produce your user manuals for you. Let leading technical communications expert Ken Whitaker show you how you can create your own professional-quality user manuals at a fraction of the cost--on your PC. Writing for readers with little or no desktop publishing experience, Ken guides you through the entire process, from organizing the material and writing the documentation to designing and printing the manual. Chapter-by-chapter, step-by-step, he creates a sample user manual, using the leading Windows-based desktop publishing applications--FrameMaker and Corel Ventura. Along the way, he supplies you with loads of insider tips and tricks for producing the most readable, attractive manuals possible, on time and on budget. You'll learn how to: Research the product, organize the material, and plan the manual in a layered, object-oriented approach Write very readable, user-friendly copy Use fonts, templates, graphic formats, and page layout techniques Take professional screenshots to complement your text Produce professional drawings and images even if you're not an artist Use sophisticated techniques like sideheads and table numbering And much more Let A Guide to Publishing User Manuals show you how to write, design, and produce professional-quality user manuals without the professional fees.