TechScribe wins commendation for documentation
PRESS RELEASE dated 2003-11-08
The ISTC recently awarded Sheffield-based TechScribe a commendation in their prestigious Documentation Awards.
The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (www.istc.org.uk) holds the national competition every year as a showcase for high-quality documentation in all its manifestations. TechScribe submitted the Bransom Stock Control User's Guide in the class for printed documentation. For this, we received a commendation for outstanding achievement.
ISTC judge David Cooper said, "There was a high standard of entries in the class this year, making the judges' task quite difficult. We gave Mike Unwalla's entry a commendation because of its thorough approach. It had a good explanation of how to use the manual itself, as well as an explanation of the product's entire user support system, such as the other documents in the set, the help line, and the website."
"One of its strengths was its quality of indexing, an area where many user guides fall down. Often manuals can be well written but then fail to give the reader a way of finding the right information quickly, which is where indexes come in. Mike's entry was the best indexed of all the entries, with two specialist indexes as well as a general index."
Mike Unwalla of TechScribe was thrilled to receive the commendation. He said, "To compete successfully in the marketplace we need to show that our products are the best. Winning this award is one way of doing that."
Plain Language Commission (www.clearest.co.uk) sponsored the awards for entries in the category of printed documentation. Martin Cutts, research director of Plain Language Commission, said, "Clarity is never an optional extra—it's vital in all technical literature. The principles are to put yourself in the reader's shoes, explain technical terms for the uninitiated, split the information into easily digestible chunks, and use simple sentence constructions."
"We are delighted with the guide that TechScribe produced for us. Customers don't contact our help desk as frequently as they used to, and when they do, the guide is a valuable resource for our support staff," said Chris Garland, joint Managing Director of Bransom Retail Systems (www.bransom.co.uk).
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