RE: Sentense construction

["Jim Morgan" <jmorgan -at- casabyte -dot- com>]

Richard Combs wrote:

>"During the meeting, we discussed:" -- followed by the bullet list.

>Discard unnecessary words. :-) 

Since the rest of the discussion in this thread went in the opposite
direction regarding both length and colon use, I will take the more radical
position. The phrase "the meeting" indicates the reader has already been
introduced to the specifics of the gathering. My approach, then, is "We
discussed:" -- followed by the bullet list.

Perhaps this depends on the audience, but the people I have been writing for
in recent years (IT engineers and managers) seem to like my ex-journalist's
penchant for reducing word counts to as low as possible in tech docs. They
all write in bullet points themselves, grammatically at least, though often
without taking the time to include the bullets. About ten years ago I began
shooting bullets like crazy, and I've received exactly one complaint that
entire time. I'm sure the rules others mentioned regarding bullets and
colons are valid in their environments, but in my world, "get to the point"
is the rule.

Regards,
Jim

Jim Morgan 
Project Manager, Documentation 
Casabyte QA Team
Renton, WA



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