STC Summit 2017

For almost 10 years, Rockwell Automation had 2 full-time editors for our technical communicators. With a large group of writers on multiple campuses, time limitations meant that not all of the team could be edited. There was no easy way to measure content quality or track improvement. In 2014, Rockwell Automation implemented a machine-editing program, which guides writers to create high-quality content. Along with standard grammar rules, we customized style and terminology rules specific to our company. Writers now run a tool during the content creation process. Evaluation and assistance are instant, and presented right in the document for the writer to correct. With this machine-editing tool, writers can spend more time learning about what they’re documenting and less time remembering style guidelines and looking up terms. With this process change, the company was able to improve the quality of source content, control English terminology, and gain translation speed with decreased costs.