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Marilynne Smith has been asked <<...for the "rule of thumb" list of how long
it takes to write a page, edit a page, etc.
I said "oh sure" thinking that I could find it right away, but I can't.
Would someone help me out?>>
You can't find such a rule because it doesn't exist. Not only does
productivity vary enormously between writers and editors (by a factor of at
least 3 times), but productivity can easily vary by a larger amount
depending on the complexity of the material. Worse yet, you can have complex
material with a single topic per page, or with 100 topics per page, and the
productivity is obviously going to be very different for these two
situations. Given that the product of these two variations gives a range of
at least 10 times between low and high speeds (and possibly more), forget
about coming up with a quick fix for estimating times.
The only good way to estimate times is to actually time yourself performing
different types of work. At a minimum, create separate categories for light,
moderate, and heavy editing and three levels of writing (easy, moderate, and
hard). Spend several weeks collecting data on how much work you can do per
hour in each category. The more data you collect, the better your estimates
will be. When in doubt, pad your estimates to protect yourself against
surprises. Have a look in the techwr-l archives under "productivity" or
"pages per hour" to find additional information on this subject.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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