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Subject:RE: Oh, no - not another learning experience!! From:<Brian -dot- Henderson -at- mitchell1 -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:54:40 -0700
I would agree that in the absence of an explicit definition for "Party',
the reader is left to interpret. And while most people might arguably
interpret correctly, there's still a potential for a "taken out of the
movie" factor. If the reader stumbles, the writer has erred...as a
matter of principle.
I suspect that only Susan can determine whether, in this particular
case, Principle outweighs politics (so to speak).
II suspect the real issue here is clarity rather than correctness.
Perhaps your partner in this endeavor is a lawyer? (This is based on
experience with my HOA's Covenants and Bylaws and the poor writing,
contradictions
throughout.)
Perhaps you could convince your colleague to adopt some other wording so
that people won't have to do a logic diagram to understand the content?
Regards,
Kathleen
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
> If the document specifies a difference between "Party" and "party"
> with a defining statement, such as "the Whig Party (hereafter referred
> to as "the Party")," then "Mike" is correct. In the absence of such a
> statement, there is no inherent difference in context and
> capitalization may be interpreted as merely an effort to make
> something more conspicuous.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Hogarth" <hogarth -at- gmail -dot- com>
> To which he somewhat patronizingly replied:
>
> > As for the "any other party" part, the difference is between the
> > non-capitalized "party" as in another political party, versus the
> > capitalized (and defined in the Bylaws) "Party" as being distinct
> > from each other. It's not confusing at all if you follow the
> > context
> correctly.
>
> Your verdict, Members of the Jury?
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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--
Kathleen MacDowell
www.writefortheuser.com
kathleen -at- writefortheuser -dot- com
kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual authors
and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write once, publish
to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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Brian -dot- Henderson -at- mitchell1 -dot- com -dot-
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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