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Subject:Re: National Technical Writers' Week From:Chuck Banks <chuck -at- ASL -dot- DL -dot- NEC -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 28 Mar 1994 10:59:41 CST
According to Lynn Gold:
> From elbows-errors -at- mc -dot- lcs -dot- mit -dot- edu Fri Mar 25 16:12:53 1994
> Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 10:34:45 -0800
> From: Lynn Gold <figmo -at- netcom -dot- com>
> Message-Id: <199403251834 -dot- KAA08403 -at- netcom10 -dot- netcom -dot- com>
> To: elbows -at- mc -dot- lcs -dot- mit -dot- edu
> Subject: National Technical Writers' Week
> ---------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------
> To: tymnet -at- frankly -dot- frame -dot- com
> Subject: A week in our honor!
> Nation to Celebrate National Technical Writer's Week
> Next week, March 28 through April 1, 1994, the nation celebrates the
> contributions of technical writers to their quality of life by
> observing National Technical Writers' Week. This event honors the hard
> work of the women and men who battle daily to protect normal people
> from the frustration of unusable products. Their work has saved the
> sanity of people struggling to make a product work by guessing what it
> does. Ultimately, these victims have been forced to turn to the
> technical manual, where they have found support and assistance. Or the
> phone number of the company's response center.
> Parades are scheduled in major cities across the nation:
> MONDAY's parade in Chicago features a salute to the Chicago Manual of
> Style, for decades a standard of editorial correctness. Special
> recognition will go to the use of angle brackets to symbolize keycaps.
> Attendees will be given a chance to win a drawing for T-shirts and
> caps showing a graphic of the keycap <ANY> and a hammer.
> TUESDAY's parade in New York will be punctuated with performance art
> depicting a passion play of common events in a tech writers' life:
> o Janice Connally will perform a rendition of "You want a 100-page
> manual in three weeks!?!"
> o Mike Corcoran will express the heart-rending, "What do you mean you
> changed the GUI interface!?!"
> o Margaret Jamison-Long will share the impassioned, "You mean my
> software wasn't up to date? Are you saying I'll have to redo ALL
> my screen dumps!?!"
> WEDNESDAY's parade in Boston will feature technical writers marching in
> formation carrying manuscripts and red pens. An adjunct marching band
> will perform a salute to the daisywheel printer, in which band members
> in T-shirts will show how to create graphics using only ASCII
> characters. A smaller team will circulate through the crowd creating
> smilies. :-)
> In an evening symposium, an MIT scientist will give a presentation
> on how to program a VCR, with simultaneous translation by a VCR
> specialist technical writer.
> THURSDAY's parade in San Francisco will feature participation from
> technical writers in the famed Silicon Valley. At the parade's end
> at Moscone Center, displays will show historic tech writer tasks:
> o Creating combined text and graphics using paper, pens, and tape.
> o Automatically generating an index by sending the document to a
> contractor.
> o Technical manuals normally overlooked, such as signs saying
> WALK/DON'T WALK, "Please wait for host/hostess to seat you," and
> "Do not exit. Door is alarmed."
> FRIDAY's parade in Washington D.C. will culminate in a speech by
> the League of Legal Writers on "The Legal Ramifications of Special
> Text: When to Use Note, Important, Warning, and Danger."
> The following people will be recognized for their special
> contributions to the art and science of technical writing:
> o Elizabeth M. Gribbons, inventor of the breakthrough "Hit any key to
> continue."
> o Evelyn Whartonfield, who stunned the world with "This page left
> intentionally blank."
> o Robert Hanford, who, in a dark moment of blind inspiration, developed
> the acronym, RTFM.
> You, too, can participate in National Technical Writers' week:
> just take a tech writer to lunch. For an especially festive treat,
> choose a restaurant with a badly edited menu, and enjoy the writer's
> paroxysms of correctness.
> Copyright (c) 1994 Connie Kleinjans
> ----- End Included Message -----
Anyone else know anything about this?
Best Regards!
Chuck Banks
--
__ ________ ______
|\\ | || // Chuck Banks
| \\ | ||_______ || Senior Technical Writer
| \\ | || || NEC America, Inc.
| \\| \\______ \\______ E-Mail: chuck -at- asl -dot- dl -dot- nec -dot- com
America, Incorporated CompuServe: 72520,411
