Month: August 2007

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Writing and Grammar: And, Both, As well as–When we join things, are they always plural?

Which of the following is incorrect?

  1. Both the status report on the bridge project, as well as the budget report, are in the folder.
  2. The page proof as well as the list of corrections has been sent.
  3. Smith, Michaels and Jones is our law firm.

I often see errors of verb agreement in business writing, even though at its most basic level, verb agreement is considered quite elementary. After all, almost no-one who writes professionally would say "the reports is in the folder" or "the project are complete."

How, then, do we end up with verb agreement problems in professional writing? Often the problems occur when more than one subject precedes the verb in a sentence.

The basic rule for multiple subjects is that when two or more subjects are connected by the word "and,"  a plural verb is used. For example, "My dog and my cat [a total of two pets] are [plural verb] hiding behind the couch."

The second rule, however, is that if you use a connecting phrase other than the exact word "and," the subjects do not add up. So when you connect two subjects with phrases such as "as well as," "in addition to," "along with," the additional subjects do not count. For example, "My dog [the main pet I am discussing] as well as my cat [which does not count, because I used a phrase other than "and"] has [singular verb] fleas."

Another problem that comes up with "and" versus other connecting phrases is the use of the word "both" in front of any other connecter but "and." The words "both" and "and" form a team, known as a correlative conjunction, and "both" cannot be used with other phrases. "Both Jack as well as Jill" is completely wrong. Either eliminate "both" or use "and" instead of "as well as."

Finally, there is an exception to the "and makes plural" rule. I call it the macaroni and cheese rule. Some phrases containing the word "and" actually describe a singular thing, like macaroni and cheese. When you eat macaroni and cheese for dinner, you are eating one dish. The macaroni and the cheese are all mixed together to form one substance. So we correctly say "The macaroni and cheese [one substance] is [singular verb] good tonight."

Not only other foods, such as spaghetti and meatballs, but also many proper nouns and job titles contain the word "and" but name a singular thing: steak and eggs is my favorite breakfast; the Stars and Stripes is waving atop the flagpole; Smith and Jones is the accounting firm; our secretary and treasurer is Mike.

With these rules and exceptions duly noted, by now you can be sure: No. 1 is incorrect, and Nos. 2 and 3 are correct.

by Jennie Ruby

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com

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Questions of the Week

Question About Adobe Captivate Movie Size & Playbars

I need a 679 height to cover the spread sheet I’ll be capturing in the movie.  Two things happen in View in Web Browser mode:

  1. User needs to scroll down to the bottom of the screen to view the entire application.
  2. The playback controls cover parts of the application that is being demonstrated.

Do you know how I can set the New movie options to capture the entire application without scrolling and having the controls block the application?

Answer

If you must capture a screen height of 679, and scrolling is an issue, you can select Full screen from the Output Options in the Publish dialog box (File > Publish). When publishing with this option, the browser’s title bar and toolbars will be hidden when the learner watches your simulation.

As for the playbar issue, use Skins (Project > Skin) instead of Bitmap playbars. Unlike Bitmap playbars, the playbars included with Skins do not cover any part of your simulation’s screen.

Question about Updating PDF Files in RoboInfo

In RoboInfo, if I want to replace an existing PDF with a new PDF, what is the best way to do that?  Do I need to first delete the old one before I import the new one?  What about if I have hyperlinks to the old PDF document and I want the same hyperlinks to the new PDF?  Do I need to go in and redo all the hyperlinks, or is there a way to avoid redoing them?

Answer

The simplest thing to do is keep the PDF file names the same. Open the RoboInfo project folder, copy the new PDF into the project folder where the old PDF resides. Replace the old file with the new one when prompted. If you keep the names and locations the same, you will NOT have to redo your project links.

Question about Punctuation in eLearning

What is the proper use of quotation marks in eLearning?  Can quotation marks be used to make a phrase or button stand out?

Answer

I tend to use quotation marks as little as possible. For instance, if you instruct a user to type "67" into a Captivate Text Entry Box, they are likely to take you literally and type "67" instead of 67. Instead, I would make the instruction appear bold: type 67.

Question about Displaying Proper Names in eLearning

How would you handle the name of books and /or the names of chapters in a book (would you use italics, quotation marks or bold)?

Answer

I use bold for all titles, names and important steps. I do not use underline (people will mistake the title for a link), italics (hard to read) or quotation marks. But keep in mind that as long as you are consistent in what you do, you can quite literally do anything you want when it comes to either of the two questions above. When in doubt, you could refer to the The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual—that’s the one we use at IconLogic as our grammar bible.

If you have your own resources when it comes to either of these two questions, please send them along. I’ll be sure to post your comments here.

Got a question? Click here.

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Adobe RoboHelp 6 HTML: Need Your Images Resized? Consider Using RoboHelp’s ReSize Tool!

If you import an image into RoboHelp, you can easily resize it in one of two ways:

  1. Drag the resize handles (the square’s that surround the image) to the desired size
  2. Double-click the image to display the Image Properties dialog box, click the Size button and change the Width and/or Height.

The problem with both of these techniques isn’t that they don’t work–they do. However, both techniques will likely result in an image that no longer looks very good (it will either look blurry if you made it bigger or like mud if you resized it smaller).

The next time you need to resize an image, consider using RoboHelp’s ReSize tool, a program built specifically for resizing your project images.

Use ReSize to Change the Size of an Image

  1. Click the Tools tab at the bottom of the RoboHelp window
  2. Find and double-click the ReSize button to start the program

    3. ReSize Application Icon

  3. Choose File > Open and open the image you’d like to resize
  4. On the Size tab, change either the Width or Height (if you leave Keep aspect ratio selected, the image will remain proportional as you change either the Width or Height)

    5. Image that has been resized using the ReSize program

  5. Save your work and exit Resize

And that’s it. All you would have to do now is import the image into your RoboHelp topic (Insert > Image). You will find that the resized image will invariably look better than anything you might have done directly in the topic using RoboHelp.

Want to learn more about RoboHelp? Click here.

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Adobe RoboHelp 6 HTML: Screen Captures Made Robotically Simple

RoboScreenCapture Makes Screen Shots Easy

RoboScreenCapture (RSC) is a screen capture utility that allows you to capture images of anything on your computer that you want to include in your Help system, manuals or Web site. The program is similar to SnagIt and FullShot–except RSC is included for free among the tools on the RoboHelp Tools pane.

Here are some of the top RoboScreenCapture features:

  • 10 capture modes including Free Hand, Virtual Screen, and Multi-Region
  • Assign custom keyboard shortcuts to capture modes
  • Save screen capture in more than 20 image formats
  • Add enhancements to captures such as callouts, image stamps, frames and drop shadows

Start RoboScreenCapture

  1. Click the Tools button at the bottom left of the RoboHelp window
  2. Double-click RoboScreenCapture to start the program

    3. RoboScreenCapture Startup Icon

Configure RoboScreenCapture

  1. Choose Capture > Capture Settings
  2. Select the Copy & Print tab
  3. Select Copy each capture to clipboard

    4. The Copy each capture to clipboard will work well with screen shots intended for RoboHelp since the pasted image becomes an image you can rename in RoboHelp. If you intend to import the screen shot into other programs, you set each screen shot to become a file (the options can be found on the Quick Save tab).

    Configure RoboScreenCapture

  4. Click OK
  5. Choose Options > Configure Hot Keys

    6. Notice that the shortcut for capturing a region is Ctrl + Shift + R. The shortcut can be changed easily enough (by clicking the existing shortcut button and entering your own), but this will work fine for the next activity.

    RoboScreenCapture Hot Keys

  6. Click Close

Use RoboScreenCapture to pull a screen shot

  1. Minimize RoboScreenCapture
  2. Open a program or window you would like to capture
  3. Press [ctrl] [shift] [R]

    4. RoboScreenCapture starts.

  4. Position your mouse above and to the left of what you would like to capture
  5. Drag over the object you would like to capture (until you have drawn a rectangle that covers your target)
  6. Press [enter] to capture whatever is inside the rectangle shape that you just drew

    7. The captured window appears in the RoboScreenCapture editing area, and the capture is on your clipboard.

  7. Close RoboScreenCapture and return to the RoboHelp Project
  8. Click inside any open topic and choose Edit > Paste

    The screen shot you created appears in the topic.

Want to learn more about RoboHelp? Click here.

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Adobe Captivate 3: Power Up Your PowerPoint Imports

Newest Version of Captivate Improves PowerPoint Import Process

If you have created a presentation using Microsoft’s PowerPoint, you can import the presentation into a Captivate project. When you import the presentation, you have the option of keeping much of the animation contained in the PowerPoint presentation or discarding the animation. If you choose the latter option, the PowerPoint slides will be "flattened." In other words, if a PowerPoint slide contains 10 objects, those objects will become one object on a single Captivate slide when imported into Captivate.

While PowerPoint animation effects (such as animated bullet builds) can be retained when you import PowerPoint presentations into Captivate, other features that can be added to a PowerPoint presentation (such as navigation buttons, audio, video and hyperlinks) will be lost after the presentation has been imported. You will have to add those features back into the Captivate project.

During the lessons that follow, you will learn how to import a PowerPoint presentation with and without animation, and how to add navigation controls.

Import PowerPoint Animation

  1. Create a new project  (choose File > Record/Create > New Project)

    2. The New project options dialog box appears.

  2. Select Other from the Select area
  3. Select Import from Microsoft PowerPoint

    4. Import PowerPoint Presentation

  4. Click OK

    5. The Open dialog box appears.

  5. Open any PowerPoint presentation on your hard drive (the presentation you open should have at least a few slides with some kind of bullet-build effect)

    6. The Convert PowerPoint presentations dialog box appears.

  6. Ensure Maintain aspect ratio is selected (with this option selected, changing either the Width or Height will change the other so that the presentation is kept in proportion)
  7. Change the Width as appropriate (the Height will automatically change proportionally to the Width you specify)
  8. Select Animation from the Import slides as area
  9. Select On mouse click from the Advance slide drop down menu

    10. Import PowerPoint Animation

  10. Click OK

    11. The PowerPoint presentation is imported into a Captivate project.

    Imported PowerPoint Slides

  11. Preview the project.

    Notice that the PowerPoint fade-in effects have been retained. When you imported the PowerPoint presentation and selected Animation from the Import slides as area, the PowerPoint slides were converted to Captivate animation slides. In addition, a large click box has automatically been added to each slide. If you want to go to the next slide, you can click anywhere on the slide to activate the click box.

  12. When finished previewing the project, close the preview.
    Close the project.

Import PowerPoint Backgrounds

  1. Create a new project
  2. Select Other from the Select area
  3. Select Import from Microsoft PowerPoint
  4. Click OK
  5. Open any PowerPoint presentation on your hard drive (again, the presentation you open should have at least a few slides with some kind of bullet-build effect)
  6. Ensure Maintain aspect ratio is selected (with this option selected, changing the Width will automatically change the Height proportionally)
  7. Change the Width as appropriate
  8. Select Background Image from the Import slides as area
  9. Select Automatically from the Advance slide drop down menu

    10. Import PowerPoint Background

  10. Click OK

  11. Preview the project.

    12. Notice that the slides move so fast it is nearly impossible to read the text.

  12. Close the preview.
  13. Go to Slide 1.
  14. Choose  Insert > Button
  15. On the Button tab, select Image button from the Type area
  16. Select Go to next slide from the If the user clicks on the button area

    17. Add Buttons to an Imported PowerPoint Presentation

  17. Click OK
  18. Position the button in an appropriate location on the slide
  19. Right-click the button and choose Copy
  20. On the Edit tab, click one time on Slide 2 to select the slide
  21. Press [shift] on your keyboard, scroll down the Edit tab and select the last slide
  22. Release the [shift] key. Then right-click any of the selected slides and choose Paste Object.

    You have not only pasted the button onto all of the slides, but the pasted objects are located in the same slide position.

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

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Writing and Grammar: Commas and Hyphens with Adjectives

Answers to last week’s quiz

I know you have been waiting on the edge of your chair all week to find out how you did on the quiz. Let’s take a look at the answers.

  • completely revised report (no hyphen because completely is an adverb)
  • high-income individuals (high and income cannot separately describe the individuals, so they must be connected by a hyphen to become a unit modifier that can describe the individuals)
  • scarcely noticeable difference (no hyphen because scarcely is an adverb, modifying noticeable)
  • long-term loan (unit modifier)
  • late, poorly written report (late is not part of the official order of adjectives, so we need a comma)
  • early-bird special (unit modifier)
  • critical care initiative (no hyphen, assuming an audience familiar with the compound noun critical care)
  • two long interim reports (no hyphens or commas needed because the adjectives are in the official order of adjectives)
  • two long-range plans (unit modifier)
  • completely revised proofs (no hyphen because completely is an adverb)
  • complete income record (no hyphens or commas because both words can describe the record separately, and the order is correct)
  • the baseball player’s home run record (baseball player and home run are compound nouns that do not need to be hyphenated for the readers to recognize them as units-like high school dance)
  • long-range budget projections (unit modifier followed by a noun identifying what kind of projections these are)
  • utterly ridiculous claim (utterly is an adverb modifying the adjective ridiculous, and therefore cannot be hyphenated)
  • three-year-old children (Two hyphens, if we mean the children were three years old. However, if there were three children, each a year old, it would be three year-old children.)
  • high earning potential (open, because earning potential is a compound noun, and high is modifying that compound)
  • false-positive result (It is not a false result, and it is not a positive result. Because these two adjectives cannot describe the result separately, they must be joined into-you guessed it! A unit modifier.)
  • one-inch margin (unit modifier)
  • fully armed artillery recovery service vehicle (Most military terms are not hyphenated. And before long, descriptions like this one grow up to become acronyms.)

How’d you do? I hope with the help of last week’s article you breezed through this with at least 90% correct-and a lot less stress than so many of us had with those pop quizzes in high school. Any questions, please write in. I love to hear from my supremely intelligent, highly motivated, adoring readers.

by Jennie Ruby

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com

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Come Learn Adobe Captivate 3

In September, I’ll be teaching two Captivate classes at ThinkB!G: "Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3" (a 2-day course on Captivate 3) and then "Adobe Captivate Plus" (a 1-day script writing class).

Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 (2-day class)

September 17-18, 2007

First, learn the essential skills necessary to create killer CBTs in Adobe Captivate 3 including: recording projects in all of Captivate’s recording modes, working with Text Captions and the Timeline, working with images, adding animation, changing the pointer path, adding highlight boxes, making projects interactive, publishing, adding audio, adding sound effects, creating Question Slides and posting projects to a live LMS.

Here’s a special offer just for readers of this newsletter:

Register now and you’ll receive $100 off the price of the class (use coupon code IL100 to receive your discount). Click here to register.

Prerequisites: Experience with the PC and the Windows operating system.

Note: The discount offer above expires September 1, 2007.

Adobe Captivate PLUS! (1-day class)

September 19, 2007 

Creating effective CBTs takes more than Captivate skills–you need an effective script. I’ll work with you to create an efficient, step-by-step script/storyboard for your very own CBT.

As you move through the writing process, you’ll share your script with your peers. Once your script is finished, you will use Adobe Captivate to record a totally interactive software simulation. Finally, after producing and testing your project, you will enable its e-Learning features, publish it and then upload it to a live LMS for the entire world to see.

Here’s a sampling of what you will learn:

  • How to write concise scripts and step-by-step instructions that are presented in the active voice, without "deadwood"
  • How to develop your very own style guide that will serve as your Captivate "bible" for years to come
  • Real-world production tips and tricks that will save you hours of labor during the "cleanup" phase

Register now and you’ll receive $50 off the price of the class (use coupon code IL50 to receive your discount).

Space is limited to 10 students. Ready to register? Click here.

Prerequisites: You should have already taken the Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 class or have a strong working knowledge of Adobe Captivate 3.

Note: The discount offer above expires September 1, 2007.

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Questions of the Week…

Question About Links to PDFs in RoboHelp

"I have created links to several PDFs in my RoboHelp project. Those PDFs (not the links) need to be updated. How do I do that?"

Answer

That’s a simple process of creating the new PDFs using the same names as the old. Then copy the new PDFs into the RoboHelp project folder and replace the old ones when prompted. The next time you generate and publish the project, you will be all set.

Question on Adobe Captivate 2 Question Slides

"I’m using question slides and the numbering is wrong which is affecting the scoring.  My project has 4 slides, then it branches off into either an Order Entry piece which is 27 slides long or a Quiz portion that is six slides long.  When you are editing the question slides, the numbering is correct, i.e. Question slide 1 out of 1.  When you preview the project, it says 1 out of 21.  When you publish and view, same thing occurs.  So when you do complete a quiz, and you get all five slides correct, it says you failed because you only got five out of 25 correct.  Twenty mystery quiz slides are being added."

Answer

I’ve seen this problem before. You have objects in the project that are reporting user interaction and the scores are inadvertently being included in your quiz (any Button, Click Box or Text Entry Box can be reported and treated as part of a quiz). You can turn off the reporting by showing the Properties of the objects, selecting the Reporting tab and deselecting Include in Quiz. After repeating this step for all of the interactive objects not part of the quiz, you will be good to go.

Question About Upgrading to Adobe Captivate 3

In your opinion, is it worth upgrading to Adobe Captivate 3 from version 2? I feel that Captivate 2 had several bugs. Has Adobe fixed the problems with Captivate 2 or has Adobe provided new features without fixing existing problems?

Answer

Adobe Captivate 3 has several wonderful new features (question pools, random question slides, the ability to duplicate questions slides, search/replace, recording multiple modes at one time, Vista support, improved PowerPoint import support) and I would strongly recommend upgrading. However, Captivate 3 is too new to pinpoint the possible bugs. As with all upgrades, much has been fixed from the previous version; some new bugs may be lurking.

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Adobe Captivate 3: A Recording Mode for all Occasions

Captivate’s Recording Types and Modes

Captivate projects are made up of slides, similar to PowerPoint. If you create a software simulation using Captivate, each slide in the project will most likely be made up of screen captures of the application you are simulating. The big question is, how do you get the screen captures? I use two screen capture applications in particular: SnagIt and FullShot. (Between the two, I much prefer FullShot.)

If you create screen captures using either SnagIt or FullShot, or another similar tool that you prefer, you can easily use the captures as background images in your Captivate project.

  1. Create the screen capture using the exact resolution of your project (if your Captivate project is set to 800×600, the part of the screen that you capture must also be 800×600)
  2. Copy the screen capture to the clipboard (open the screen shot in any image editing program, such as Paint, and choose Edit > Copy); or when you capture the screen shot, set the Preferences in SnagIt or FullShot so that the screen shot automatically goes to the clipboard
  3. Switch to Captivate
  4. Right-click the slide and choose Paste as Background

Most people who create Captivate projects elect to use Captivate to create the screen captures. When using Captivate to create the screen captures, there are two recording types: Auto Recording and Manual Recording.

When you create projects using the Manual Recording type, you are responsible for pressing a specific key on your keyboard each time you want Captivate to create a screen capture (the default key is the Print Screen key). The problem with recording projects using the Manual Recording method is that you’ll have to press the screen capture key on your keyboard–a lot! You could easily get distracted and miss important screen captures.

If you use Captivate’s Auto Recording type, Captivate captures the steps you take on your computer by creating a screen capture every time you click your mouse. If you record your projects using the Auto Recording type, you have the following Recording Modes: Demonstration, Simulation, Training and Custom.

Demonstration: Used to create a Demonstration movie. This mode automatically includes captions, highlight boxes and mouse movements.

Assessment Simulation: Used to create a Simulation movie. Automatically includes Click Boxes and Failure Captions, but does not capture your mouse movements.

Training Simulation: Similar to Assessment Simulation in that it is used to create a Simulation movie. Click boxes get added automatically. In addition, there will be Hint and Failure captions. Mouse movements are not captured.

Custom: Allows you to create a hybrid project that could be part Demonstration and part Simulation. This is the mode that I recommend.

One nice new feature in Adobe Captivate 3 is the ability to record a project in all of the available recording modes, at the same time. You will learn how during the steps that follow:

  1. Create a new project. (Select Record or create a new project from the Record new project area of the Captivate window.)
  2. Select all 4 modes (Demonstration, Assessment Simulation, Training Simulation and Custom) from the Recording area.

    Captivate 3 Multiple Recording Modes selected

  3. Click the Record button and record your movie
  4. When finished, press END on your keyboard to stop the recording process.
  5. And prepare yourself! After ending the Recording Process, you’ll be greeted with the new Save Project Files dialog box that will prompt you to save all 4 recorded movies at the one time. How cool is that?

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

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Writing and Grammar: Have You Been Studying?

What? The quiz is today?

I know, the word quiz might be making you nervous. It might be giving you bad memories of a stressed-out high school career. But why not give it a try as a way to see more examples of how to use–or not use–commas and hyphens with adjectives. (If you need help, the last few posts. Both topics were covered during the past few weeks.)

In the examples below, add commas and hypens as you think necessary. The correct answers will follow, next week.

  • completely revised report
  • high income individuals
  • scarcely noticeable difference
  • long term loan
  • late poorly written report
  • early bird special
  • critical care initiative
  • two long interim reports
  • two long range plans
  • completely revised proofs
  • complete income record
  • the baseball player’s home run record
  • long range budget projections
  • utterly ridiculous claim
  • three year old children
  • high earning potential
  • false positive result
  • one inch margin
  • fully armed artillery recovery service vehicle

by Jennie Ruby

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com