TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Chuck Martin wrote:
> Bonnie Granat wrote:
>> Sometimes people who have never seen a particular application expect
>> to find out about it by reading its manual. I think their
>> expectation is valid.
>>
> How often have you seen that happen, or seen it reported as happening?
>
I have no statistics. Most textbooks have this feature (and many other
nonfiction books do, as well). Software manuals are closely related to
textbooks.
> What I've seen, over and over (and seen reported even more often), is
> that people almost universally find out about an application by
> exploring it. (It's one thing that makes menus so useful, not that
> they are necessarily easy to use, but that they allow exploration of
> what an application can do.)
>
If a person is totally -- and I mean totally -- new to an application, a
good manual will introduce the reader to the product. Sometimes people
buy applications they know nothing at all about, except perhaps that
they've heard of it and decided it can help them achieve some goal. A
good manual can address such a person in the Introduction.
> And then, for the few who might want to read the manual, front to
> back, to find out about the application, why would they reasonably
> want to find out about the manual? I mean, that's not why they are
> reading the manual, right?
>
A synopsis is helpful to me, personally, when I look at a textbook. A
scan through the TOC doesn't necessarily put the information into any
kind of context (especially highly technical information that might be
new to me). An Introduction does.
ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl
WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT: New! Document review system for Word and FrameMaker
authors. Automatic browser-based drafts with unlimited reviewers. Full
online discussions -- no Web server needed! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -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.
