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I didn't mean to hijack the thread, it has just come up recently in my
work. I'm not looking to convince anyone else, just looking to be
convinced. I remember early on (I came from technical side, not
writing) my writing was rife with passive voice and obsessive
avoidance of "you" (you=bad in high school writing, right?). It took
someone very little time to explain why this was bad. One example:
"The password must be changed every 30 days." Great! Who does it.
"You must change your password every 30 days." Ahhh... now I get it.
On 5/3/07, Brierley, Sean <Sean -dot- Brierley -at- ipc -dot- com> wrote:
> Use appears in other sentences and perhaps you will have the desire to
> append, "as if by magic" or "out of nowhere."
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> <snip>
>
> On a slight tangent, I would *love* to hear an argument for displays
> over appears that doesn't involve knocking appears for being "magical".
> I've never heard a user of my documentation make that claim, only
> another Tech Writer. It would be interesting to track down where the
> "magical appears" claim first surfaced.
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