Re: A prescriptive language?

[Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

> Technical writers usually try to use the same word to refer to the same thing over and over. We don't look to variety as a good thing the way a creative writer might. The goal is ease of comprehension and precision, as opposed to an aesthetic goal.

My experience, though I agree with you in that this is how it should
be, does not indicate this is "usually" the case.

> Technical writers are ultra conscious of the audience we're writing for, and we carefully target our approach to a particular audience. As opposed again to creative writers, who might have an overriding goal of self-expression, and leave looking for an audience to their publishers. Before we start writing, we do (or at least we should do) an audience analysis to determine audience needs. Sometimes, our audience may be global, however. Or it may be limited to one team of our company.

Again, I don't think this is as common as we'd like to think it should be.

--
Bill Swallow
HATT List Owner
WWP-Users List Owner
42.8162,-73.7736
http://techcommdood.blogspot.com
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