RE: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs

Subject: RE: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs
From: "MMdeaton" <mmdeaton -at- mmdeaton -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 18:29:54 -0700

Shauna is correct, the MSTPM is meant as a guide to language used in
documentation for a Windows environment. Publishing it to the outside world
was a decision based upon all of the requests from the outside for copies of
it. I strongly disagree with those of you who say it was done for some evil
marketing purpose or that those who did it are morons.

"But, I am curious to know how these maroons came up with such garbage."

"It completely disregards the needs of the end user to impose a
brand-specific standard that can function poorly in actual use."


Such name calling is not useful and I know it is not professional.

That said, having been one of those morons, the work done on that style
guide was not done by marketers, but by technical editors with many years of
experience both in the software industry and elsewhere. Some of the content
is based upon results of usability testing, as well. Marketing had nothing
whatsoever to do with it.

"In short, Microsoft's other writing-related tools are decidedly fallible;
why should we treat the MS MoS
as if it were the bible of technical writing?"

And the spell checkers in Microsoft products are NOT produced by those same
technical editors, but purchased from a third-party. Believe me, we fought
long and hard to have things in the spell checkers changed, but we lost.

Mary Deaton
Deaton Information Design
Web Shui at
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-7705-8-6301693-1.html?tag=st.bl.3880.a
lso.3880-8-6301693-1
News and opinion at: http://www.mmdeaton.com




Forwarded by Request.

-----Original Message-----
From: Iannone, Shauna K. [VIS-Non J&J] [SMTP:SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com]


<snip>

The MS MoS is a nice concept, built on the foundations of a long tradition
of such industry-specific manuals used in journalism, medicine and the like.
However. It completely disregards the needs of the end user to impose a
brand-specific standard that can function poorly in actual use. When writing
for a non-technically-inclined audience, jargon terms confuse the user.
While it may be useful in providing the technical community a standard for
publications referencing Windows-based software, it is not necessarily
appropriate for all audiences,--and it is the audience that comes first in
determining the road to clarity of expression. Assume your user never read
the MS MoS. Would he or she necessarily understand what is being said? Are
you using terms or conventions with which they are unfamiliar?

Another thing to realize: the MS MoS is not being submitted by an
independent party, grounded in a linguistic, literary or even grammatical
background. It is being submitted by a commercial party with a vested
marketing interest in being perceived as the standard within the industry.
Anyone working with the MS grammar checker in Word has to be painfully aware
of how often the utility tries to "correct" grammatically correct statements
with grammatically incorrect ones. The MS spell checker is limited by the
breadth of the limited dictionary provided. In short, Microsoft's other
writing-related tools are decidedly fallible; why should we treat the MS MoS
as if it were the bible of technical writing?

Just my opinion,
Shauna Iannone
Tech Writer, American Computing Technologies,
currently supporting 3GT CIM at Vistakon



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References:
FW: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs: From: Brierley, Sean

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