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On the Unspoken Rule
Friday, December 19, 2008 — posted by Sheila Loring
Ben Minson at Gryphon Mountain Journals published an entry on the unspoken rule -- technical writers who don't read documentation. Admit it, you've been guilty from time to time. For me, learning to use a product on my own is an enjoyable challenge, one reason I'm a technical communicator. For a more complex product, such as the digital photo frame I just bought, I like to read the manual from cover to cover (or at least until the English translation ends), particularly if I'm teaching someone (hi, Mom) how to use the product.When technical instructions are sparse or unclear, several scenarios come to mind:
- The manufacturer doesn't value thorough documentation.
- As a result, an inexperienced (or non-) technical communicator wrote the documentation.
- The book was poorly translated.
- How long did the writer have to complete the project? Perhaps the development cycle didn't allow for sufficient screen shots or editing.
- How often did the product change throughout the writing process, so that last minute updates were missed? Even the best laid plans suffer when engineers tweak the interface or add new features one week before publication.
- Do you find evidence of inadequate single sourcing, for example, references to "earlier in this chapter"? The writer perhaps didn't have enough time to yank such references from an inherited book.
- Were the wrong tools used -- Word instead of FrameMaker? (Word might be fine for short, simple documents, not long, graphics-intensive technical documents.)
I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for complete, consistently formatted documentation. This is the goal of conscientious technical communicators even under the worst of circumstances. I'm saying sometimes the writer isn't completely at fault.
Labels: documentation, technical writing, unspoken rule
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