RE: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes

Subject: RE: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes
From: "Guy K. Haas" <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>
To: "Techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:05:53 -0700 (PDT)

I took the survey, and in the comments box at the end, I told Tom that in
many questions I had one answer in mind for the initial question, but then
the brief paragraph that discussed/explained it jerked me around.

Take this one:

2. Technical writing stifles your creativity.

Because you spend all day immersed in writing instructional text, your own
sense of creativity declines. You feel fewer flashes of inspiration and
generally have less creative drive and desire. You even find yourself
adopting the same techniques of writing short, clear, dry, humorless
sentences in your email and journal. True or False?

There are four separate statements there, and I would not answer TRUE or
FALSE to all of them. I'd go with TRUE on some and FALSE on others.

In fact, even the first sentence of the paragraph gives me problems --
even if I spend part of my day installing the latest beta of the product,
then exercising it, then writing some instructions and exercising the
product some more, then tracking down an SME to ask what a certain command
in the GUI means when it says <whatever it says>, I might say that my
sense of creativity declined -- even though I did NOT spend all day
"immersed in writing".

Maybe Tom needs to re-chunk the survey into more, briefer questions.

And, when I took the survey an hour or so ago, it was not limited to
true/false, but offered mostly true, sometimes true/sometimes false, and
mostly false.

What's up with THAT?

--Guy K. Haas
Software Exegete in Silicon Valley



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help gives you everything you need to author and
publish quality Help, Web, and print content. Perfect for technical
authors, developers, and policy writers. Download a FREE trial.
http://www.componentone.com/DocToHelp/

True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info.


References:
Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes: From: Cardimon, Craig
RE: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes: From: Fred Ridder

Previous by Author: Re: WaH
Next by Author: internet and copyright
Previous by Thread: RE: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes
Next by Thread: Re: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads