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Subject:RE: We can sink battle ships From:"Guru Kamath" <guru -at- bom5 -dot- vsnl -dot- net -dot- in> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 9 May 2000 23:21:19 +0530
Hello,
Indeed, this is true. In one of my User Manuals for a paperless office
product I had an illustration which shows how documentation can sink a ship!
Cartoons and other such stuff are not normally seen in Indian manuals -- so
when the Chief Executive called me, I was afraid. He liked the manual I had
created and he appreciated the illustration about the ship and the
accompanying quote about documentation sinking a ship!
I do not remember where I took this quote from -- but you can rest assured
it is from an authentic source and true. (Typically, I pick such stuff from
Book of Lists or World Records, etc)
One of my favourite examples (several years old!) of moving towards online
and web is that aircraft (as in airplanes) specifications/documents are so
bulky (say 25,000 pages!)that by the time someone prints the document, the
specification would have changed!
Greetings from India! Our laws are so voluminous that justice has sunk!
Guru
guru -at- bom5 -dot- vsnl -dot- net -dot- in
(author of article in Intercom May 2000 issue on Technical Writing in
India.)
If you were to take the paper used in all that documentation and stack it on
aircraft carrier . . . the ship would sink.
