From the Bloggers

June 2016

If you're interested in practical, hands-on advice from experts, we've got two great June posts for you. Heather Wickham looks at tables in Word, and Meredith Evans talks screenshots in user documentation.

One of our resident Microsoft Word experts, Heather Wickham, has shared a brilliant post on how to make Word's tables work for you. Heather's posts always contain several bite-sized gems – there's almost certainly something new in there for everyone. You can learn how to:

• resize an entire table by dragging outside borders
• apply table styles
• set a default table style
• save a commonly used table to Quick Tables gallery

Meanwhile blogger and twice-time winner of the plain English TC of the year award, Meredith Evans, has penned an opinion piece on screenshots. Let's be clear, Meredith's opinion is based on considerable experience, both as a technical communicator and a trainer.

She looks at the upsides and downsides of using screenshots, then follows this up with a really useful list of recommendations. Have a look and see if you agree with Meredith – as she says, comments are welcome. And if you're interested in screenshots, you might also like to see Earnsy Liu's summary of the evidence for screenshots in online help Death by screenshot: Should we include them in online help? (TechCommWire, August 2015).

Please share the posts on your favourite social media platforms. It's easy to subscribe so that you always know when we've posted a new blog. And if you would like to get involved as a blogger, please get in touch with our Communications Coordinator. You've got ideas and knowledge to share!