Intersections in Learning with Guests Jen Yaros and Kim Lindsey

Monique St Paul  
Good morning, everyone. My name is Monique St. Paul, and you're here for intersections in learning. Our guests today are Kim Lindsey, you can wave for us. Thank you and Jen yarborough's, they're both from sin craft productions. Jen is a learning consultant. And Kim is a lead Learning Experience Designer. The reason we wanted to talk to them today is because they both know a lot about technical writing. And we wanted to talk about how that intersects with working with those of us in learning and development. So I'll let you both introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are and what you're doing.

Kim Lindsey  
I'm gonna let Jen go first, because you all need to know, Jen.

Jen Yaros  
Well, um, I started out wanting to be the next great American writer. And I realized I needed to pay bills. So yeah, and, and just looking. And I found something about technical writing. And I'm like, Well, I don't know what that is. But I'm a writer, so I can learn. It was a, you know, a lot of learning. It's a lot different than what I thought it was. But I started out in doing technical writing for the aerospace industry. And then I decided, hey, if I'm going to be a consultant, I need to make sure that I have a lot of skills available, so I can keep work going and decided, hey, instructional design, there's a lot going on there. Let's see if I can add that to my resume. And I realized that there was a lot of overlap. There's a lot of differences. But there's a lot of overlap between the technical writing and instructional design and fell in love with instructional design have been doing it for what the last two decades or so.

Monique St Paul  
Excellent. And then Kim, do you want to share with us? What's going on with you?

Kim Lindsey  
Well, you, most of you probably know me pretty well. I'm the lead lead lead learning experience designer at Cinna craft productions in Cleveland, Ohio. And I've lived in the Northeast Ohio almost my entire life. So I'm a glutton for punishment here as far as whether I actually had a long career in healthcare, and then transitioned into technical writing, because I had been a user of technical documentation. And then from there, I also do do a layoff. I found my current wonderful job at Cinna. Craft. And I actually knew technical writing, as Jen said, there's a lot of overlap, but I really had no experience at it before. Dan hired me, but I learned really quick, and I love it. It's a very creative field. And it's a wonderful fit for me, I wish I'd found it sooner. So hopefully, that's enough.

Monique St Paul  
No, that's perfect. I do what I mentioned, of course, that Lisa Crocket, my co host is behind the controls today. So she's producing for us. But you both mentioned that it wasn't what you were expecting. So could you tell us a little bit about what technical writing is?

Kim Lindsey  
Oh, I'll go I'll go ahead. You know, what, I kind of feel that, um, as far as the kinds of things that are being written, technical writing is a broader field than instructional design, because you could be writing the inserts that are in your pharmaceuticals, you could be writing grant proposals or scientific research papers, you know, you could be writing user manuals help files like, hey, here, I have a book, I wrote this book. That's about SOPs, it's about software, you know, all the screenshots and everything. So there's, you could be creating software, demos and tutorials. There was also some video what what there is not though is too much graphics, because technical illustration is a separate field. And usually there are different people who do that. So what did I miss Jen?

Jen Yaros  
Well, so where my background is in aerospace, I did a lot of parts listing. And I don't know if many people have seen those, you don't see them too often. But if you buy something that you have to construct yourself. In the very beginning, you'll see these are the parts that are included. And here's the tools you need. Well for airplane engines, that parts list is about this thick. So every single nut and bolt has to be accounted for how these all are assembled and go to so it's just all of the parts the part numbers, descriptions, the quantity and which assembly they go to. And the importance of that is if somebody is working on it doing repairs, they need to order the parts and that's how they find it. So it's a like a supplemental to the manuals. Sounds like a very tedious thing. But it appealed to me. I loved it, because it was very, it. I think it was my OCD.

Monique St Paul  
One way to do organization? Yeah, yes.

Jen Yaros  
And I loved it on. Another thing with technical writing is you have to be familiar with not necessarily know, but at least be familiar with a lot of regulations and standards. I worked a lot with standard technical English in back in the day, it was called simplified English, I still recommend using that even in training today, because it helps if things have to go to translation, it helps people where English is a second language, it helps get rid of that ambiguity in the English language. A lot of times you have to work with FDA regulations, you have to be familiar with, you know, Aerospace has their whole list of regulations. So there's a lot of those things that you don't have in training that you have in technical writing, where I found similarities was transferring knowledge to an end user. And that's what I really appealed to me was talking to these highly technical people, super smart engineers that know everything about a component, and they are excited to share their knowledge. And I have to translate what they say into common every day, something everybody will understand and only give them the information they need. So I'm not going to tell them how to build the airplane, I'm just going to tell them where the start button is.

Monique St Paul  
Questions, one of which is in chat, which is when you sort of say simple, right? I think he said simple writing, is that to a certain grade level, like I've heard, though, most writings at eighth grade level is where you should say so

Kim Lindsey  
yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot more to it than that. And actually, we should have Jen on to do a session on that. So let's put that on the list. So,

Jen Yaros  
yeah, so, it is more than that, um, share, please. Yeah. So, and I have done several talks with this, it is certain words you can and cannot use. Because in the English language, so many words have multiple meanings, or they can be used as a noun and a verb. So this regulates how you use the words and the words that you choose to use. must use active voice, that's a big thing. Active voice, no passive voice. So it's basically a list of rules of words to use in grammar, and how you use them how you apply them, making things as simple as pop as possible. A lot of times people think that technical writing is making something sound as complex and technical as possible. But it really isn't. It's how do you simplify that distill it down into something that everybody's going to understand, and everybody can use it? I know, everybody's looked at manuals, and they're like, I don't understand what's being said, it's because it's written poorly. And I love getting my red pen and marking them off and sending them back to the company.

Monique St Paul  
Do you have any resources if people need to simplify their language that you go to about what words to use or anything like that, if you don't know, we can certainly something later. But yeah,

Jen Yaros  
I can get a web address for and to share later, I don't have an off the top of my head. But it is on S T is a an organization that updates this manual periodically in the words, when I first started it, there was only a list of 300 words that were approved to use in a manual. But now that's changed. Because you have new technology, new words come into play when you have new technology and that kind of thing. So it is always updated. But there's a manual you can download, and it will take you through it. And so I'd be more than happy to share that.

Monique St Paul  
Excellent. And then you mentioned that you want to translate it to your end users. So I've read instructions before and like you said, you know, good writing when you see it, you know, bad writing when you can't get something together. So what do you think? Would you tell someone who's just coming into technical writing that they should watch out for to make sure that it's the easiest for their end user to understand.

Jen Yaros  
Don't get caught up in the jargon. A lot of subject matter experts, they tend to stick with their jargon. I do it in technical writing. And as an instructional designer, I forget sometimes that my clients don't know what an SME is, you know, so making sure that you're not getting caught up in that jargon and back that kind of overlapping this with training. And I wish I had known this when I was a technical writer, what's the objective and the goal for it, and make sure you stick to that. Because if it doesn't meet those, it doesn't need to go into the manual or job aid or help file or whatever it is that you're writing.

Monique St Paul  
Excellent. And then, so can you, you showed us that big book that you wrote, when you started projects like that? What does that look like? How many people are you working with? How long does that take? Are you working with additional writers? Can you explain sort of the process of writing a technical manual?

Kim Lindsey  
Well, that one in particular, for that software company. That's a it's been a while ago, almost even 10 years ago, I think that I had that job and wrote that book. Maybe, yeah, a long time, 20 years, because I've been Cinna craft for 12. And but you have the, at a software company, you have a product manager who is in charge of that software product, like Microsoft Word would be a product or something, and you work with them, and maybe their assistance, and then you interact with the actual developers, a lot of times, and this is, net back then we didn't that nowadays, technical writers will be on an agile agile team. And I have friends who are tech writers now, and they're they work at a software company, and they get to sit in on all the Agile meetings, and they're changing the documentation every day. And publishing it like that. So, um, you work with quite a, you work with the actual people who are creating the software. But you're also in it, it's a good company, you'll also be working with, like their tech support. And so that you'll know, what the, the users know, what questions are they having? Where are they having trouble, so that, you know, oh, I need to update my manual or my help file or, or a job aid or something like that, that you need to update that to be what people need. Many times that mean, if the interface is really good, it's going to be obvious to the person what they're supposed to do. But if you know, interfaces are never perfect, and everybody needs a little help. So um, so you're basically documenting around whatever hurdles, were, I should say over hurdles, that that would be for the end user. I was I wanted to say, this is something that sparked in my mind from earlier, I was I was at a company that and I was my subject matter expert was, I mean, this woman was brilliant. She's a member of Mensa. And she wrote this big long list of instructions. And at the very bottom, in big red letters, it says, but first, before you do anything else, you need to blah, blah, blah. And like, Okay, I'm sure that made a lot of sense to you. But I had to go and politely sheepishly asked her. Is it okay, if I move this up to make it step one? And she's like, Oh, yes, of course, you know, but I mean, when you approach a person like that, I mean, you just can't go in blaze and then say, well, you did this wrong, you know, I mean, just so that she understood, and she thought she was emphasizing it is same way we get people who think that just putting a capital letter on a word is an emphasis, rather than using bold or underline. I mean, I Oh, my goodness. Um, yeah. So there's, there's, it's interesting, you deal with people, and they're just they're brilliant. But as Jen said, they don't, they don't communicate well, well, thank God, they don't, because then we all have jobs. So I wanted to bring up the Microsoft Manual of Style. And I don't know if any of you lnd folks is familiar with this. But when when you have a project that involves like anything with a software interface, this would be a helpful reference for you. And I got a couple of links here. Basically, this is Microsoft. They have a manual style, and they don't do that. Now they have it online. It's it used to be a big book. And it tells you how to talk. You know, if you're describing an action on a user interface, what's the easy button what is the standard way that everybody uses? And the thing is that Google and Apple they follow This so that things won't be confusing for people. And I will tell you, I don't this is my pet peeve. When you read in software instructions, and it says, click on the Save button, like

Jen Yaros  
my favorite. My favorite one is when they say, depress the button, I'm sorry, but the poor buttons, they're not depressed.

Monique St Paul  
Just question for you both in terms of your learner seeing it because you're not speaking to your learners, or people who are reading the instruction, how do you get feedback that things need to be changed? Is it just that someone tells you the airplane part fell apart? Or is it? What? How do you get feedback that you should change some of the things that are happening there?

Jen Yaros  
So funny story in please, in aerospace industry, we would get these things called service bulletins that would come over the fax machine back in the day. And first thing in the morning, you had to say, Okay, what is going on? Is this, you know, does something need to be changed in the manual? Do we need to write new instructions on how to do the service bolt, and it's usually some kind of repair that needs to happen. Some it was always disturbing you to get a service bulletin that said that parts were liberating themselves from the plane. Right.

Monique St Paul  
Yeah, no one thinks liberating themselves.

Jen Yaros  
Exactly. So that was service bulletins, were one way to you know, it wasn't necessarily something was written incorrectly. But there was a lot of testing involved, we would write something, it would go back to the engineers, they would review it, it would go to test and setup. And they would follow it. Even if they knew how to do the procedure, they would follow exactly as it was written. And then markup if anything was unclear, or out of order or incorrect. You don't always have that luxury. In technical writing, it's just Aerospace is highly regulated for, you know, obvious reasons, but often that there will be some testing phase that goes along with it.

Monique St Paul  
I have another question here. So people say that the more that you read, the better you become at writing, do you believe that's true? And if so, share what you've read that might be interesting.

Jen Yaros  
I strongly believe that the more you read, the better your writing is, you're also introduced to different styles of writing. And you can start picking up and telling the difference between good writing and bad writing. My big thing now is I pick up passive voice like that, and I'm like no. And, and that was a difficult transition for me when I went from technical writing into training is using more conversational tone. In technical writing, you don't do that. And I remember, one of the writers gave me something to edit. And I'm marking it up and getting rid of all the use. And he's like, No, we can actually do that. So there is a little bit difference. And so understanding who your end users are, what is the message you're trying to convey? And you adjust your writing to that? So absolutely. The more you read, the more you can pick up on the different types of writing and styles there are and how that translates your message.

Monique St Paul  
This is my shameless plug to say go to your local library, because it's free, and you can buy the book to support people, but we're gonna say Kim, sorry.

Kim Lindsey  
I was gonna say what Jen said. Absolutely. You know, that although I am guilty of not reading in very many genres. So I mean, I stick to but I've been waiting a long time. So and I noticed that there are there are words that I think are common and it's like nobody has said that for 20 years. That's conflagration.

Monique St Paul  
That's too much. I like it. I like it. I have probably two more questions before we go into the speed round. One is that what are the misconceptions that people have about what you do?

Jen Yaros  
A lot of people think that the manuals that they get that they don't understand is what I do. And I'm like, No, I I do good stuff.

Unknown Speaker  
That's not me. That's

Jen Yaros  
You can understand my instructions, right. But now a lot of people who I mentioned before they think that the technical writing is a lot of jargon and just, you know, speaking over people's heads to make it sound important and scientific. And I think that's the big misconception is that that's not what it is at all. And a lot of people think that, oh, well, I can do that. Well, you absolutely can. But there is training, there is learning involved, you can't just pick it up and just do it. You know, there, there's definitely things that you need to learn just just like in training and development, you know, yes, anybody can learn how to do it. But there is learning involved, you can't just do it.

Kim Lindsey  
I would say that that's, it's kind of a misconception in our field. You know, I think that a lot of people don't know what technical writing is, and they don't realize that they are actually doing it. You know, if you're doing a course, that's about software, you know, how to use the interface and stuff, you're doing technical writing. And so don't right click on the Save button, just right, click Save. But it's simple. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's funny that the two fields are very, very similar. And I think that I actually had a couple of these to diecasts. I don't know if you, Monique, and Lisa, remember me typing in the chat. I mean, like probably four or five times in that one class. That's technical writing, that's the person thought that he had invented a new field. And it the field does not promote itself. They're they're a little bit more geeky, a little bit more introverted. So they're not as you know, out there, as we all are, and many of us are introverted, too. So if you have technical writers that, you know, at your company, leverage them, you know, they know how to communicate that kind of stuff, but just realize they're going to be geeky. And as Jen said, they're going to want to take out all the use, and then but that you work together and that's the best thing.

Monique St Paul  
That's yeah, I do. I do like that. I'm gonna I know you have one. Kimber, do you have a favorite quote or mantra that you live by?

Kim Lindsey  
Oh, you know, my,

Monique St Paul  
I know yours, but I'll have you share

Kim Lindsey  
it. This I actually thought of this. When I just before I got my job at Cinna craft, because I'd been laid off. And so I was looking for something to put on my business card. You know how you do then. And it's always remember what it's like not to know. And that's something that I mean, I've always once I thought of it and people, people who are in my outplacement class, sit, you know, message me about that even now, all these years later, because, I mean, that's the key, you know, keeping in step with a person who doesn't already know. And being that translator like what Jen had described. So good,

Monique St Paul  
very good description, being the translator. But Jen, do you have a mantra that you live by?

Jen Yaros  
Monty Python, Always Look on the bright side of life. Yeah.

Monique St Paul  
Sure. Honestly, I have one question from someone else in the chat. So I want to make sure I ask it for them is do Jen and Kim think technical writing is different from scientific writing.

Jen Yaros  
Um, I don't know much about scientific writing. But my understanding of it is they have to do a lot of like noting resources and you know, citing sources and that kind of thing, it's more of research.

Kim Lindsey  
My understanding is scientific writing is a subset of technical writing. And you find a whole lot more people doing software documentation than what you find in in science writing, that maybe this scientific writers just don't realize that they are technical writers, you know, and that there are resources for them. So, now, I

Jen Yaros  
have worked with lab technicians in writing standard operating procedures and that kind of thing. So Stan, but writing those SOPs that is part of you know, that technical writing, but what they were writing up as the results of their experiments and stuff. I don't know if that's considered scientific writing. I guess I'm not familiar enough with it to speak on that.

Monique St Paul  
Good so we're gonna go into the speed round. I would like both of you to answer if you can as quickly as possible off the top of your head don't think to make too much simple writing was the last song you listened to.

Jen Yaros  
Something by Metallica. I can't remember the name of it.

Monique St Paul  
Okay, fair. I'll take it and it's an answer. What about you?

Kim Lindsey  
Um, probably yes. The joy of man's desiring by pianist Daniel tripping off who is phenomenal. I gotta go find that a YouTube

Monique St Paul  
I would ask Next, what is your favorite form of entertainment?

Jen Yaros  
Oh, reading,

Monique St Paul  
shocker there. Yeah. Reading, reading? And I would say definitely I've laughed more in this cast, technical writing and you think boring, but definitely not. What's the thing that you do that people might not know about you? Or is unexpected about you?

Jen Yaros  
Well, most people know. It's probably my weirdest thing though. I run very long distances. How long? 100 Miles is my max.

Monique St Paul  
Oh, God, like in one sitting or like one one sitting when obviously running one race. Christina says on purpose.

Jen Yaros  
And I paid to do it. I paid to do it.

Monique St Paul  
So we're just gonna ignore that. But if you want to be really hardcore about reading, we know who to talk to you, Kim, what about you?

Kim Lindsey  
Yeah, I did not know about you. Yeah, I was busy getting that link for you guys. Oh, thank you, I appreciate it. Um, that, you know, you guys know so much about me. Um, and some of you might not know that I have grapheme synesthesia, that's not a disease. That means that when I am thinking about words, and numbers, all of them have colors in my head. And they all there are some of the letters and the numbers like a K and a seven is the same blue. But I've had that ever since I was a child. It's not it. I don't know where it came from. But it has really helped me to memorize things. But then if you if your name starts with the same letter as somebody else's name, I will mix up your names

Monique St Paul  
associated with the same color. Gotcha. Next question is, is there anyone that you fan girl or that you'd want to know about get super excited about either in the industry or not? Doesn't matter? Oh,

Jen Yaros  
so many writers? Definitely. Anybody that's been in a Star Wars movie, yes. Or?

Monique St Paul  
Yes, please, more?

Kim Lindsey  
Well, I got I guess, I've got to say the obvious thing is Brandon Sanderson, because I did pay for the backstage VIP pass on his last book release to you know, my picture taken next right next to that guy, so he's a fantasy author.

Monique St Paul  
So I didn't even know what writers had VIP passes. So you just taught me something new. The question that only two people myself and one of the person have gotten said yes to Could your partner or best friend accurately describe what you do for a living? No. No, that that was zero hesitation. Kim. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we have three. So Lisa, there you go. The three of us so far, who have said yes to that. The second was three, nine. Been able to say yes.

Kim Lindsey  
But not seven out of nine.

Monique St Paul  
No, no, not at all. Lisa, can you drop in there LinkedIn. Happy to. I want to thank you both for coming on today. And for being fantastic guests even beforehand. They certainly wanted to be honest. I'm very excited to have shared their experiences with you. At the next week at same time, we're going to speak to Ellen Natsu. And at least is going to be doing that interview on the 14th at 11am. But both of you do you have any final words before we sign off for the cast today. Thank you all for joining us today. It's

Kim Lindsey  
a blast. Be here for Alan he is so fun be here.

Lisa Crockett  
Before we sign off, I just have to say I've been hysterically laughing and thanking God I was on mute is so funny, and so and so informative. And I have all these links open and great music queued up so thank you so much.

Kim Lindsey  
This Yeah, this this is Cinna craft. This is who we are.

Unknown Speaker  
We need i We need to talk.

Monique St Paul  
Yeah, this was definitely made my day much better than I was cranky before this. So much needed laughter and

Unknown Speaker  
ready for the day. It was awesome. It was everybody. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

‍