RE: Example of clear tech-comms and policy guidance writing this good

["Dan Goldstein" <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: McLauchlan, Kevin
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:55 AM
> To: Dan Goldstein; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: RE: Example of clear tech-comms and policy guidance 
> writing this good
> 
> Up to and including page 8, I've found some instances where 
> the writer should have paid attention to sentence-structure 
> parallelism among bullet-list points. In fact, some were full 
> sentences while others were fragments.  But they were 
> obviously bullet points, and they conveyed their information 
> briskly and without inducing any stumbling on my part.
> 
> Other than that breakdown of parallelism (oh, the horror) I 
> found what Daniel found - good, clear, engaging writing, 
> where somebody obviously put a lot of thought into both the 
> content and the organization/presentation of that content.
> 
> So, what aspects of the writing offended you?  Do I need to 
> read further to find them, or did I overlook them already?
> 

I didn't say I was offended. I said it was poorly written.

Consider the first sentence in Objectives: "[One] objective of this
section is to enable you to understand how recording calls and keeping
records can benefit the school." Or another sentence, about five lines
down: "[One] objective of this section is to enable you to understand
how using the service desk will help the technical support function
become more effective." Such wordy, frothy sentences can be found
throughout the work; any good editor could trim them with little effort.

There are some sentences whose broken syntax suggests a non-native
writer: "The turnaround of user requests is faster, yielding improved
efficiency and request tracking, escalation and workflow is improved."

I was also struck by the general comma-phobia, which slows down and
occasionally confuses the reader.

This work is hardly an example of "simple, clear writing." But I agree
that the presentation shows a lot of thought.


































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