Celebrate One-Year Anniversary of Inside Jobs

We started our eNewsletter, Inside Jobs, in November 2021. Here are some highlights of what the year looked liked in our infancy.

November 2021. In a nutshell, we create technical, marketing, and business publications, infographics, print and eBooks, eLearning tools, and more. We’ve been at it for 35 years, but who’s counting?

December 2021. We created an infographic that compares our writing process to growing a garden. As we nurture the seedlings of ideas, the results we deliver are the product of a careful, methodical process.

January 2022. We developed The eLearning Companion to Career Success in 12 Easy Steps: A Journal. There’s a Self-Assessment; and there’s My Evolving Story, fill-in-the-blank prompts for writing your own success story.

February 2022. We explored new tools to create new products. Using Jutoh, we first created an eBook, A Step, a Stroll, a Blog, a Book: Collecting My Thoughts, and then created the print book. Both are now available for your reading pleasure.

March 2022. We shared excerpts from Living Well in Froggy’s World of Plenty: Sweet Talk to Read Aloud. In spite of the frivolity of the stories, we asked some sober questions: What toasts do you offer yourself and others? What work does your colony achieve? What hobby makes you limber, lively, and lovely? We’d love to know.

April 2022. You’ll find 20 books that open the mind, touch the heart, and inspire. What better way to spend a rainy day, a snowy day, a sunny day, or just about any day. For a brief description of these books, click here.

May 2022. We shared our spring cleaning tips for both the physical and digital workspace. Also, Judy shared her four books at a book signing and came away with stories you can only get when you venture outside your home office and interact with the world.

June 2022. We shared how it is important to clean out the items we no longer need so that we can be more open to receiving new items and ideas. After cleaning her office of some items that she no longer needed, she attended a crafting afternoon and found a new way to organize her ideas for a new book with a junk journal.

July 2022. Shenouda Associates shared some of the ways we maintain our focus in the office through taking classes outside of the home or indulging in a separate hobby. This month, Judy looked into turning Living Well in Froggy’s World of Plenty: Sweet Talk to Read Aloud into audio. To listen, click here.

August 2022. We spoke about how the end of summer can prompt us to keep learning. Parents get their kids ready for school. Everyone looks for opportunities to grow their professional development or simply look for a way to connect with other like-minded individuals, like at a book event.

September 2022. We looked back at how much knowledge was shared at the book event we attended in addition to how much fun we had meeting local authors and hearing them speak about their wares.

October 2022. We shared what could be our last outings into the great outdoors before the first snow fell. We also pointed out the joy of shopping locally and supporting the non-chain businesses in our community.

November 2022. Starts year two of Inside Jobs. We can’t wait to share with you what’s new.

To subscribe to Inside Jobs, our monthly newsletter, click here. To visit our website, click here.

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We Never Stop Improving

We spiffed up our website with words wrapped in graphics

Challenge

At Shenouda Associates Inc., we even edit ourselves… continually! To keep pace with evolving technology and taste, our website needed some updates: optimization for the small screens of mobile devices as well as the large screens of computers, with less need to zoom in on or scroll through dense text, and with more visual appeal.

Solution

Several associates had used the application Flare by MadCap Software and considered it an easy choice—the right choice. Its well-designed interface eliminated or minimized the need to know any of the standard languages used in website development. It included several easily modifiable templates and all the tools needed to create a modern, easy-to-use, visually pleasing website, including:

Responsive layouts that can be viewed and navigated with ease on any device

Expandable text that gives the reader the choice of what to read and when

Graphic components—on the Home page and on the Our Work page

On the Home page, we freshened the look by replacing text boxes with panels that introduce, both in words and graphics, the content on the website.

On the Our Work page, we added

How does your garden grow?

A big thank-you to the very talented gardeners at my business, Shenouda Associates Inc., where we write all kinds of business and technical publications, including infographics like this.

Writing is like growing a garden. As we nurture the seedlings of ideas, the results we deliver are the product of a careful, methodical writing process that starts with understanding our readers’ needs and planning how to meet them.

At the start, we take a close look at the environment. We analyze the existing materials and start to picture the finished product. As the scope of work comes into focus, we map out how to move from the existing materials to the finished product. We consider how best to organize and format the deliverables. We assemble tools and break ground by creating a framework with outlines and templates. We sink our hands into the dirt, gather input from subject matter experts, and do our homework to understand the subject matter.

We place content into the right location and shape it into paragraphs, lists, tables, and other text elements. By leaving out whatever is not needed, we streamline ideas, showcasing the most important content and nurturing it to maturity.

We make sure that our creation matches our plans and feels like a balanced, unified whole. We check that the work is accurate and complete, minimizing distraction from jarring details.

As we walk through our garden, we confirm that it is easy to navigate. At harvest time, we publish our work, providing readers a bounty of new food for thought. Mature, published documents continue to grow and change with the seasons. We review and revise. We weed out what is no longer needed. We provide ongoing maintenance.

With the proper care, we allow our garden to grow.

Of course, we can do the same to support your writing needs.

For more information, visit Shenouda Associates Inc.

Stylish writing

Over many years, all of us at Shenouda Associates Inc. have researched, written, edited, and published hundreds (maybe even more) of works both large and small. For us, attention to detail is more than chic or fashionable. It is de rigueur—necessary, required, and proper. Shenouda team member, Donna Muldoon, knows a thing or two about guides to stylish writing. Here is her take on the subject.

Of all the tools that a writer employs, a style guide may be the most used, most reliable, and most important in the day-to-day work of that writer. A style guide that is well organized, complete, and easy to use can save a writer the time and frustration of continually looking up information.

Just as an encyclopedia is a reference source that provides information that can be found in several other sources, a style guide can also act as a compendium of much of the information needed by a writer. A style guide is part Bible, part cookbook, part dictionary, part game rule book, and part fashion magazine. Like the Bible, a style guide proclaims what you shall and shall not do. As a cookbook, it outlines the recipes for font, color, dimensions, and icon usage. It serves as a shortcut dictionary for both common and product-specific words. Like a game rule book, a style guide can make referee-type decisions by reinforcing legal and corporate standards in matters of dispute. And the fashion magazine aspect is characterized through guidelines on tone, voice, and the presentation of content.

The main purpose of a style guide is to provide uniform, consistent standards throughout a group—whether it is a company, a field, a community, or a publication. The standards can form a unified voice and appearance that create a single brand image for all content creation including web pages, video, and marketing collateral. But most importantly, it ensures that multiple writers, contributors, and editors write with a common consistency.

So many options

There are several well-known commercial style guides such as the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, and the newly updated Microsoft Writing Style Guide. These are acknowledged sources of editorial guidance used and approved by various writing communities. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to use clear governmental communication that the public can understand and use. The U.S. government website (www.plainlanguage.gov) includes excellent general writing advice, including addressing your audience, using concise language, attending to visual design, and testing your content.

The reluctant writer

A long-time member of the Shenouda Associates Inc. team, Donna Muldoon shares her entry into the technical writing business. Reluctant or not, her writing skills are strong and solid, and her editing skills are impeccable.  — Judy Shenouda

Donna, the reluctant writer, with Judy, the boss!

I am a reluctant writer.

From my first aptitude test in junior high to my last career counseling tests as an adult, I was told that I should be a writer. Even Mrs. C, my high school English teacher with the feared red pen, commented that I should be a journalist. But I always disliked writing. It was painful, a dreaded chore, whether it was a simple thank you note or a speech to be presented. Sometimes the words came easily, but other times, they wouldn’t come out of my pen no matter how soon that assignment was due.

But here I am—after 22 years as a technical writer—still reluctant to do any real writing. I’m defining real writing here as creative writing—the opposite of technical writing. For me, creative writing requires thought, imagination, attention-grabbing sentences, interesting characters, and maybe some human emotion. None of that is in my wheelhouse.

So, when a career counselor suggested that I consider technical writing, I needed more explanation as to what that entailed. The counselor set up a meeting with someone in the field, with the warning that this was not a job interview. With a business writing sample in hand and absolute certainty that no amount of information would convince me that writing was for me, I went to the meeting. The expert in the field turned out to be Judy Shenouda! Over the course of two hours, Judy explained the concepts of technical writing and showed me some examples. The sight of 200-page finished publications did not fill me with waves of excitement, anticipation, or confidence! But Judy made me an offer that very few people ever receive: I could try out working on a technical writing assignment for a month to see if I liked it. If Judy was willing to take a risk, there was nothing for me to lose.

The first 10 years, the next 10 years, and still counting

I tried out that job for 10 years, becoming the sole writer for one complex product that encompassed over 50 manuals, totaling more than 2,000 pages. In addition to becoming familiar with the product, I learned how to write using a controlled language, how to publish on FrameMaker, and how to build periodic CDs for the distribution of the manuals.

Skip ahead to now.

My Job: Taking Care of Business

Courtesy of Intercom, the Magazine of the Society for Technical Communication, May 2015

In the spring of 1985, I was working in a career services office for a university when a request came from a corporate manager for someone to write a policies and procedures manual. Though I had not worked in corporate America and had not written a manual, a colleague encouraged me to apply. With a degree in Public Communication and a major in Literacy Journalism, I had solid writing skills. I took the four-month assignment, enjoyed the work, did it well, resigned from the university, worked through an agency on a variety of technical and business writing projects, and, a year later, launched my own business.

Part of what I love about running Shenouda Associates Inc. is the ability to schedule my own time. By now, I know what needs to be done to keep the business humming along. My calendar is filled with key dates, so that at the start of any given week, I can set priorities. No longer is every day or every hour booked, which means I have the luxury of doing some of my own creative work, including self-publishing my own books.

Overall, my job includes activities in the administrative, HR, and marketing areas and, of course, many day-to-day activities revolve around the craft of researching, writing, editing, and publishing.