Re: Proof that content is more important than style

Subject: Re: Proof that content is more important than style
From: Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 10:15:34 +0100


As you know: accuracy is simply the single most important aspect of any technical
manual. Consistency, style, organization, design, etc. are all important aspects,
but still of lesser importance to accuracy.

I cannot remember anybody disagreeing with you there.

Now, some people are just simply obsessed to madness that content and style be
given equal weight.

Andrew, I'd appreciate if you'd stick to the arguments and leave out speculations about the state of mind of their proponents or distortions of the manner in which the arguments are presented ("scream, holler, throw a 1000 simultaneous fits") that amount to nothing more than thinly vieled insults. Thank you.

About the topic at hand: You seem to have understood the argument for the importance of design differnetly than it was meant. What was said (at least how I understood it) is that every documentation needs to be designed _appropriately_.

What 'appropriately' means of course differs from document to document. A short Read Me file or an RFC requires very little design*. A longer document requires a lot more design. And in any case, your example of a great number of short documents could not prove that longer and more complex documents do not require more design.

The argument is usually: "content & style are of equal
importance, lacking either one makes for bad docs."

Misunderstanding: the argument is usually about "lacking accurate content or an appropriate amount of design".

This is in stark contrast to the handful of "personal anecdotes"
offered up here as some kind of "proof" that design is important.

The personal anecdote that I posted was not intended to prove that design is abolutely and always important. It was a refutation of your assertion that design is never important. (This follows from elemental logic: You cannot prove something by example, you can only refute by counterexample.) I even _said_ that it was open to debate how typical this example was.

You can scream, holler, throw a 1000 simultaneous fits, and post a billion
messages based on "personal experiences", but the cold, honest fact is: content
will ALWAYS be more important than style.

As I said above: Who ever disagreeed with this on the list? But the 'cold honest fact' remains that only usable documentation is good documentation. And to be usable, a document does not only need content, it also needs this content to be arranged and presented in an appropriate manner. And that's design.

Regards
Jan Henning


*Although, here too, usability is greatly improved by appropriate design measures, such as rules and blank lines to separate sections, and all-caps, set-off or underlined headings. Yes, that's design too.


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References:
Proof that content is more important than style: From: Andrew Plato

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