James Bailie, Technical Writer

Quality Documentation

My work achieves the levels of detail, clarity, accuracy, and attractiveness demanded by persnickety clients. I specialize in procedure-oriented instructional documents, such as user’s guides, tutorials, and reference manuals, but I can produce appropriate copy for any business-related document.

Company

I am a sole-proprietor company operating out of London, Ontario, Canada. For small jobs, I am a one-man shop, designing, writing, and producing digital copy. For larger jobs, I work effectively on teams.

Mission

I strive for clarity of expression in my writing and clarity of execution in my designs. Both ugly documents and pretty documents distract users. A good design is transparent.

Tools

If your company keeps all documents in MS Word format as a matter of policy, I can produce decent-looking documents using only Word. Otherwise, I layout with Adobe InDesign to produce camera-ready PDFs.

Experience

I have 24 years experience working as an auditor in industrial quality assurance. In my former career, I discovered and documented variation in material, process, and specification on products with multimillion dollar values on a daily basis. Precision and attention to detail are second nature to me.

I understand the cost of non-conformance to your business. I know first hand how poorly-written internal documents dramatically increase non-conformances, and how poorly-written or poorly-designed customer manuals increase customer dissatisfaction. Your intellectual assets are safe in my hands.

Technical Knowledge

I have a passion for for all things mechanical and complex, from machinery to computers. I have contributed several original Open Source programs to the FreeBSD ports system. If your product is software, I can talk to your developers in their own language, and I will never waste their time with unnecessary interviews because I hate meetings as much as they do.