RE: Newbie needs help

Subject: RE: Newbie needs help
From: "Jane Carnall" <jane -dot- carnall -at- digitalbridges -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 10:15:29 +0100


>Thank you Sean for the sites that you listed for XML, I will go and
>check them out. For others who have flayed me for asking where to do
>research (which was highly constructive by the way - some egos on this
>list need to be checked a tad).

Best way of reining them in is to ignore them. <g> It doesn't work for
horses, but it works for egos. Or at least, if it doesn't, you no longer
care, which is certainly not true of horses. Personally, I prefer cats, who
have the added merit that *they* ignore *you* (until they require attention
from resident staff, of course).

>Also, the other big question was "How does one bill for
technical articles of this length." Being relatively knew to this
concept of billing for technical writing as an entity unto itself, I
have no idea. From what I have gleaned from the archives and the
threads, for manuals one estimates approximately 2 hours per page.
However, if one did this for an article of 30 pages long it would be
quite prohibitive in cost. Any ideas.<

Charge by the word. Call technical journals and ask them how much they pay
writers per word (or if they have some other method of paying). Bill your
client accordingly - and don't forget to ask them how many words they expect
to get to a page.

As for Java, a good place to start is probably http://java.sun.com/ and move
on from there. It depends (as you presumably already know) exactly what you
want to write *about* Java. But Sun Microsystems (with whom I have
absolutely no commercial connection) have good free documentation on their
site, which might give you a better idea of what questions you want to ask
the Internet.

Jane Carnall
The writers all stand around a cauldron chanting and occasionally tossing in
a large ego. Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine, and mine
alone. Apologies for the long additional sig: it is added automatically and
outwith my control.




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References:
Re: Newbie needs help: From: Jenny Megale

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