Thistle-Tomes

Thistle-Tomes

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

The following are my 2024 short takes on all things content in life and work:

  1. No one is an expert on AI yet. Take everything with a grain of salt.
  2. Sustainability should be part of every content strategy and content project.
  3. Lack of specificity on websites can be both a friend and an enemy. Vagueness can leave room for negotiation but also misinterpretation.
  4. Jargon in customer-facing content can be a significant barrier to understanding and engagement.
  5. Something I like to call “name theory” says that what you call something matters. And it doesn’t have to rhyme with “oom.”
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AI Prompting for Bloggers: My Trial-and-Error Discoveries

AI Prompting for Bloggers: My Trial-and-Error Discoveries

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

Six months ago I set out to see if artificial intelligence (AI) could help me be a better blogger. In this post, I am sharing what I learned and providing tips to fellow bloggers.

I want to thank the many trailblazers in business development, program management, and content development who helped push me along with their presentations, workshops, and webinars. I have absorbed their guidance and made it my own.

My journey took me from a basic understanding of AI—through experimentation—and, finally, to a state of cautious optimism about its benefits and potential pitfalls, even dangers. I experimented with Poe, Grammarly, Claude, and ChatGPT (mostly the latter). I also tried various prompting techniques and patterns (primarily by accident). I had some successes and some failures.  Here’s what I learned along the way.

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The 5 Benefits of a Content Audit

The 5 Benefits of a Content Audit

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

If we’re honest with ourselves, we should be auditing our organization’s content more often than we do. A content audit, which is a survey and analysis of existing content, should encompass content that is online and printed, long and short, text, audio, video, and graphics. Or encompass at least the part of that whole that aligns with your organization’s current challenge.

If you’re having difficulty selling the need to conduct a content audit, this blog post is for you. If your organization has never conducted a content audit but you suspect it should let me help you understand what a content audit might reveal.

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The Secret to Consistent Voice, Tone, and Style 

The Secret to Consistent Voice, Tone, and Style 

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

Not long ago, I was asked what exactly I do. It’s not really a secret. I help organizations improve their existing content while making room for newly developed content—all while helping to ensure the final, overall experience for the target audience(s) is consistent. But the conversation got stuck on the word “consistent.”

Why is consistency important? How does one achieve it? Especially in technical content?

A consistent voice, tone, and style across documents and online content can be the difference between a cohesive user experience and a confusing jumble of instructions. We’ve all experienced it, right? That user manual or technical guide that feels like a dozen different people wrote it on a dozen different days. The information might be accurate, but the experience of reading it? Well, that’s another story.

So, let’s explore the real story of consistency in voice, tone, and style in technical communication, the pitfalls of inconsistency, and how to establish guidelines that ensure your content speaks with a single voice to the reader, no matter how it is generated or how many writers are involved.

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Of Fallacies, Biases, and Justices: The Terms of Our Time

Of Fallacies, Biases, and Justices: The Terms of Our Time

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

It’s political season again in the U.S., and to make an understatement, it’s been a doozy. Speaking of statements (political or otherwise), I think now is a good time to reconsider the logical fallacies we all learned to avoid during our entry-level English composition classes.

No, I will not lecture you like your high-school English teacher would. (And yes, I was one once.) But I would like to lecture Justice Alito. Not only about fallacies but also about biases. More on that later.

Mistakes and Shortcuts

In case you don’t remember, logical fallacies are arguments that make a mistake in logic or fail to “satisfy the criteria of a cogent argument” (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Mistakes in deductive logic, the “form” of logic praised by Aristotle, are formal fallacies. Failures to make or prove a reasonable argument, whether through deductive or inductive reasoning, are informal fallacies. That might be a distinction without a difference, but historians care. (Please remember I was an English major for a reason.)

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