TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I have a question about phrasing that I need some help with.
I am putting together a content plan for a procedural manual
that documents a module of our software. The module lets you
maintain demographic information for individuals and corporations
throughout the other modules in the system.
We have the capability to record a death for a person, but
unfortunately some users may "kill" a person by mistake. Not
to worry, however, because we also have the capability to
bring them back to life if they're mistakenly killed off.
Therein lies my problem. What do I call this "ressurection"
procedure? We've unofficially called it "undeceasing" in house,
but unfortunately that's not a real word. And other synonyms
(revive, etc.) don't sound right.
I'm inclined to move away from the actual "reviving" verbs and refer to
this procedure as a record-keeping task. I mean, we're really not
killing some one or bringing them back to life with a simple
click of a button, we're just recording the fact that someone died
(or, in this case, correcting a mistake). I'm calling the kill-off
procedure "Recording a death."
So far, my titles for the ressurection procedure are along the lines
of "Correcting an accidentally recorded death" or "Correcting a
record coded as deceased." Those are closer to what I want, but I want
to be clear that the act of recording the death was a mistake (and this
procedure will fix it), as opposed to the death itself being a
mistake.
Your challenge (if you choose to accept it) is to come up with a
short (ten words or less?) title for this procedure that describes
what it does. Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?
TIA - Charles
--
"There's not much to be said about the period
except that most writers don't reach it soon enough."
- William Zinsser
========================================================
Charles Fisher
President, STC Washington DC Chapter
Senior Documentation Specialist
Datatel, Inc. (703) 968-4588 (voice)
4375 Fair Lakes Court (703) 968-4625 (FAX)
Fairfax, VA 22033 charles -at- datatel -dot- com