Alan Brandon

I’m impressed so far with the redesign of the Boston Globe website. The new layout is clean and easy to use, but best of all it now features responsive design so that the page display adapts to whatever device you view it on. I have only casually browsed the site so far, but I have tried it on my notebook, smartphone, and color ebook reader. (OK, that’s a ThinkPad, Droid Incredible, and Nook Color.) The stories are easy to find and follow on all devices, and site performance seems good (unlike the old boston.com sluggishness).

I currently subscribe to home delivery of the Sunday Boston Globe, and every time the paper is wet, missing, or late I think seriously about canceling. However, access to the new online Globe is now included with the subscription. I think this new redesign may be enough to keep me subscribed.

Over on Serious Eats, Erin Meister has a series of coffee dictionary posts, explaining the specialized terms related to that most precious tech-writer-fueling drink. So if you don’t know your canephora from your arabica, or the difference between a cafe au lait and a cafe con leche, grab a cuppa and check out the articles.

You’ve got to love an article that starts:

It’s important to understand what clever technology developers and open source leaders have known for years: Great product documentation isn’t loathsome — it’s marketing, and darn good marketing at that.

Mike Puterbaugh, VP of marketing at MindTouch, has a great read at Mashable titled 5 Reasons Your Product Documentation Is a Marketing Asset. In it he lists five things about quality product documentation that can make it a strategic resource for finding and keeping customers.

Here’s a quick summary, but it’s worth reading the whole piece.

1. Credible Language vs. Marketing Lingo

Should your documentation look or read like marketing copy? Of course not. Documentation is decidedly not marketing copy. It should be credible, and absent the jargon and salesmanship that customers and prospects have come to expect from the marketing kind.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Documentation should be keyword-rich, densely linked and expertly structured. Importantly, it doesn’t raise the red flags that other types of content might.

[ I disagree somewhat with Mike's approach that documentation should be seeded with SEO keywords. Good documentation will already have all the keywords necessary for it to score well in search results. ]

3. Cross-Functionality

First and foremost, documentation responsibilities should probably fall within the CMO’s duties because that’s where its effect starts and stops.

[ I have experienced this firsthand. The doc departments that I have run within Marketing groups have been the most effective in producing good documentation. ]

4. Community Building

Although documentation has a bad rap for being wonky, realize that it can actually present an opportunity for community and customer congregation.

5. Identifying Needs

Documentation is a very effective way of identifying unmet customer needs. It holds a wealth of information that your product team will drool over, and yet that feedback loop is seldom taken advantage of. What are the most commented-upon items, for example? The most viewed? The most cited?

[ Fortunately, modern tools and publishing make it much easier to track this sort of information. ]

OK, I know serial commas and Oxford commas are the same thing. But I needed a third item in my headline list so I could use one.

Have you heard the brouhaha about Oxford University eliminating the namesake comma from its own style guide? (And here we must note that Oxford University uses a different style guide than that published by Oxford University Press, which still does recommend the use of the serial comma. Got it?) There’s been plenty of coverage, but my favorite so far is this late-breaking summary from Meghan Casey at Brain Traffic. It opens with an excellent quote from the also excellent Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves:

“There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.”

For me, the serial comma is essential. Maybe not life-or-death essential, but I agree with Brain Traffic’s Melissa Rach:

“The serial comma is a courtesy. Is it required? No. Is it a nice thing to do for your users? Absolutely.”

The serial comma was part of the Bellcore style guide, Putting Words on Paper, which I cut my teeth on. That style guide is basically hard-wired into my brain, and so the serial comma is with me to stay.