Recent Projects

For all your writing and editing needs

Recent Projects

Jean Rollinson - background

I have been a Technical Author and Editor since 1994. I am experienced in writing, editing and proofreading.

Having graduated in 1991 with an Honours degree in Electrical Engineering, I worked as an Electrical Engineer for Foster Wheeler Energy Limited. After a couple of years as an engineer, I launched my career as a Technical Author and Editor.

One major client has been an international consultancy group, who specialise in company benefits and actuarial consulting. I have also been contracted by two large electronics companies, to write user guides for mobile phones.

Assignments

Assignments have included:

Writing

Designing and writing the User Guides for mobile phones.
Designing and writing the User Guides and Administrator Guides for specialist recruitment software.
Writing a Procedures Manual for technical authors, to ensure that the documentation was consistent and all the necessary steps were completed.
Developing a Writers Guide for actuarial programmers to try and keep the raw text consistent and reduce the amount of editing and rewriting that was required.
Writing a basic User Guide to help non-native English speakers to get started with an actuarial software program.
Writing the on-line help for two actuarial software programs. I wrote Windows Help files using Help Magician Pro. I also wrote and edited DOS help files in Word 2, then compiled them using commands at the DOS prompt.
Designing a quick reference card to accompany the printed documentation.

Editing

Copy editing an electrical engineering handbook.
Copy editing articles for academic publications.
Copy editing a series of papers for an international conference.
Creating a Word template from a series of technical documents to give them a consistent appearance.
General editing and proof reading of the technical documents.
Preparing camera ready copy for academic texts.
Proof reading sections of several annual statistical publications. This included cross checking numerical data from Excel and other sources.
Editing master SGML files so that the documentation for several geographic territories could be stored in set of master files.
Editing and checking the layout of the documentation for two actuarial software programs, using Ventura 4.2 and Word 6.

HTML and web development

Generating territory-specific HTML files from the master SGML files for the users to view on-screen.
Posting urgent documentation corrections and updates to a website, using Microsoft FrontPage.
Creating this website using FrontPage for the main work, then manually editing the resultant HTML.
Editing user instructions to go on a company website using DreamWeaver.

Others

Generating territory-specific Word files, then using these to create Adobe Acrobat files so that the users could print a properly-formatted version of the documentation.
Creating and updating Microsoft Word templates for software manuals.
Creating flowcharts, screen captures and other graphics for software documentation.
Writing Microsoft Word macros, using Visual Basic for Applications, to tidy up the basic Word document that was produced by the initial conversion from SGML.
Liaising with a translation agency to get the User Guide translated into German, Spanish and French.
Comparing translated files with the original English to check that any changes were carried across.

Software experience

I have experience with the following software:

Text editing and layout

Adobe Acrobat 4.0 and 5.0
Adobe FrameMaker 7.0
Allaire HomeSite
Arbortext Adept Editor
Corel Ventura 4.2, 5.0 and 7.0
DreamWeaver
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft Word 2, 6, 95, 2000 and 2007
Quark Express for pc
WordPerfect

Graphics

Corel Draw
Visio

Screen capture

Collage Complete

Windows Help

Help Magician Pro
Windows Help Compiler Workshop
RoboHelp X5

Version control

Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
PVCS

Others

Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft SGML Author for Word
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications