Conffesions of a Technical Writer (was: You're not the only person who can write)

[Sean Wheller <seanwhe -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

I once send out a document in which I had purposely
inserted an error of humor.

The error was located at the end of a long list of
instructions, 24 steps. These steps were important to
the configuration of a system, yet for some reason the
customer never followed them. Our technical desk
regularly logged calls on this subject, so I spent
many hours trying to find out why. I tried all types
of tactics, but nothing worked.

The error said; "Repeat steps 1 through 24, twenty
times, or until the procedure is complete."

The book went through four revisions. Not one
engineer, developer, technician or customer ever
noticed.

The procedure was correct, the English was fine. I had
copied this procedure directly from current and
released Engineering notes. I had not checked the
procedure against the system, I trusted the Engineer.
He was one of the leading experts.

One day I sat down and tried the procedure for myself.
To my horror I got very lost. When I asked the
Engineer about it, he also got lost. So we went to
technical support.

"Ah", said the manager. He smiled and went on his
merry way. The Engineer and I looked at each other
with confused looks, shrugged and walked back to our
offices.

Some weeks later, while digging in the engineering
archive I came across a document to a system that was
no longer produced. I guess it caught my eye because
of the date and the fact that the meta-data showed it
was incorrectly classified. I opened it, so that I
could determine where the document should be placed. 

Guess what I found. That's right. A 24 step procedure
to loading the configuration of a system. That system
had been used as the basis for the current system.
Evidently, engineers had not bothered to check whether
or not this document actually matched the current spec
and had happily made a copy paste.

Needless to say I never trusted engineering docs 100%
again.

I updated the procedure without telling a sole, but
left the error. Lo and behold technical support got a
call 1 week later. The question asked; "Why do we have
to repeat this so many times?"

The support manager sent me a message to the effect
that he was happy we had solved the problem. He never
said why he had not explained to us the cause of the
problem. He was strange that way.

--
Sean Wheller

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