Re: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...

Subject: Re: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...
From: "Jo Francis Byrd" <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:27:40 -0500


Steven said:

Then one of the businessmen went ballistic because I has misspelled his
name, and also because a single
technical number (an important number, but still one single number) in the
document was mistaken -- both trivial errors, easily corrected with a word
processor.

Then Chris said:

Understandably you see these as trivial errors, but think about the
perspective of your clients. Yes, even with a _DRAFT_ in their hands. From
their perspective: A. they probably aren't aware of the "draft" stage of
documentation if their business plan was so disorganized to begin with, so
the concept of a document in a less-than-finished state may be unfamiliar,
and B. you made two mistakes (albeit in a draft, as you said), one of which
plucks an emotional trigger (the last name being misspelled.)

My empathy lies with Steven. A lifetime or so ago, I spent a week in hell
with a company in the throes of "reengineering".A bunch of people would get
in a room with a facilitator and brainstorm. Instead of hiring an idle court
reporter who could keep up with them and type every word (accurately) into a
word processor, they had tech writers (including yours truly) come in to
record it all. They would start with a sheet listing the main points they
wanted to talk about, then, after they had their precious piece of paper so
cluttered with notes, they'd want a print out of what they'd done so far.
Mind you, we "recorders" were not working on laptops, we were on regular
computers, everything was on a floppy, the facilitor had a cat if you did a
Save, because you couldn't do anything until the document was saved. Didn't
have time to spell check, to think, even, in the ears, out the fingers, just
hope there's not too many typos.

One particular manager would take the print out, which wasn't even a draft
yet, and point out every typo, punctuation error, misspelling...as I said, a
week in hell. I was NOT sorry when they decided I didn't fit their pistol.
In fact, I remember going out to eat at a VERY nice restaurant to celebrate!

Jo Byrd


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Enhance, optimize and automate your FrameMaker-to-PDF workflow with TimeSavers:
Define all PDF features in your source FrameMaker files ONCE, distill MANY.
Bookmark Controller, Link Controller, UnBloat & more : http://www.microtype.com

Experience RoboHelp X3! This new RoboHelp release combines single sourcing,
print-quality documentation, conditional text and much more, into the most
monumental release of RoboHelp ever! http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



References:
RE: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...: From: Grant, Christopher

Previous by Author: Re: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...
Next by Author: Re: UI humour
Previous by Thread: RE: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...
Next by Thread: Re: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads