RE: Paragraph numbering - industry standard?

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

bounce-techwr-l-106467 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com wrote on 08/04/2005 09:29:39 AM:
> Isn't it possible that unnumbered docs, like numbered docs, are produced
> by TWs who are "giving the customer/audience what they want"? Doesn't
> sound like laziness or incompetence to me. Sounds like different
> products for different customers, according to what they want.

True. But the TWs clamouring for the elimination of numbering or 
pooh-poohing its usefulness NEVER come on list and say it's what their 
audience wants.

It is ALWAYS someone asking: 

"My template/style guide says I have to number and the engineers want it 
that way because it has always been that way. I think it's ugly and 
outdated. Can someone give me proof that it isn't standard?"

That is putting personal preference and personal design considerations 
ahead of audience desires and communication requirements.

My response to that question is: TOUGH. Prove how the proposed new layout 
and design will be superior and lose no information from the old. THEN 
provide an ROI analysis to show that the gains are greater than the effort 
to change. Then and only then could you MAYBE consider a new 
template/style guide.

Until then "Do it the way it has always been done." is a perfectly valid 
directive and far from arbitrary. Sometime the logical reason something is 
done the way it is, is lost from memory and hidden in history. You change 
the way things are done at the peril of re-learning hard lessons.

Maybe the original decision WAS entirely arbitrary. But once the original 
decision is made, no matter how arbitrary, arbitrary reasoning shouldn't 
be used to justify change.

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer

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