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Subject:Jobs in the G.W.N and one quick Q From:Erin Cullingham <ecullingham -at- linnet -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 12 Sep 2002 09:51:02 -0500
Jobs in the Great White North:
In response to the "Job-hunting in Canada" post- similar to another poster's
reply, I can help you with a few leads if you intend to move to Winnipeg.
But then... nobody really ever intends to move to Winnipeg...
One quick Q:
Now, I have a question. I am proofreading a What's New document and an
Installation Guide written by a Product Manager (NOT someone you'd call a
Wordsmith, let's just say). My plan, just to save me HOURS of proofreading
and rewriting grief, is to mainly leave the content as is, and just
proofread for spelling, punctuation, any really hideous grammatical issues,
and to clean up the formatting. I could spend days on this puppy if I
really wanted to tidy up the grammar/sentence structure/English language.
I'm noticing this type of thing a lot throughout this document:
"The Manage Plans button found throughout the Planner application links the
user to the Manager application..."
(...where "Planner" and "Manager" are names of applications in our modular
system suite).
I HATE this. It just sounds bad to me. Not from a STC-endorsed tech
writing standpoint, but from a basic English-language, clear-concise-writing
standpoint. I think saying "the Planner application" is redundant. This
document explains the new features and defect fixes in an UPGRADE of a
software product they've been using for years. Our users know Planner and
Manager are applications.
I have been going through and deleting the extreme overuse of the words
"the" and "application," so my example sentence would now read, "The Manage
Plans button found throughout Planner links the user to Manager..." Maybe
I'd italicize 'Planner' and 'Manager' or something, and if I wanted to get a
little bit more nit-picky, I'd take out the reference to "the user" because
I dislike that one too...
My Q: Tell me, is it "proper" technique to say "the Such-and-such
application" every time one references the application by name? What do you
think?
Giddyup.
Erin Cullingham
Communications Specialist
Linnet - The Land Systems Company
1600-444 St.Mary Avenue * Winnipeg, MB * R3C 3T1
Tel: (204) 957-6459 * Fax: (204) 957-7568 * Web: www.linnet.ca
<http://www.linnet.ca/>
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