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Subject:RE: Revision Marks for Deleted Material? From:Richard Lippincott <richard -dot- lippincott -at- ae -dot- ge -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 13 Jun 2002 07:14:19 -0400
Jo Baer:
> My question is, if you use revision marks, do you use them to identify
> areas where material has been deleted?
>
Yes.
> And if so, how is this formatted?
> Just a revision mark and a blank space? A revision mark and some phrase
> saying that material has been removed?
>
Military and commercial airline manuals generally solve this problem by
leaving some sort of indication that material has been removed. For example,
a procedure might originally read:
1. Install a washer.
2. Install a bolt.
3. Install a nut onto the bolt.
4. Use safety wire to secure the bolt.
Then you get a change to delete the safety wire step, so your next change to
the page reads:
1. Install a washer.
2. Install a bolt.
3. Install a nut onto the bolt.
* 4. (Deleted)
(The asterisk represents your change mark.)
It doesn't look as pretty as it could, but it clearly communicates that
you've removed material from that step.
The next time after this that you revise that same page, it's safe to assume
that the users know a step was removed, and you can just publish it with
steps 1, 2, and 3, no change bar.
If the deleted material is sentences in the middle of a paragraph, I'd just
put a change bar out roughly where the deleted material was. When the users
insert the new page, the change bar on the new page will draw their eyes to
the paragraph, and they'll see the difference.
--Rick Lippincott
Saugus, MA
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