Re: White Papers

Subject: Re: White Papers
From: eilrh -at- EXCHANGE -dot- WCC -dot- LUCENT -dot- COM
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 10:51:00 -0400

I used to work for a company where I was responsible for the technical
white papers.

I can't vouch for any other interpretations, but the ones I wrote were
more similar to research papers than anything else. The audience was
clients, developers, and salespeople who wanted or needed to know about
a given technical subject such as Disaster Prevention and Recovery,
Client/Server Architecture, or System Security.

Clients used them for their own decision-making processes, developers
used them for guidance and their own edification, and salespeople used
them to answer prospective clients' questions.

I should note that most of our clients were very large companies, and
they were on AS/400s, which are relatively difficult to find technical
information on; so we often ended up providing platform support as well
as software support.

For my projects, I assumed a fairly technical audience, as the topics
were fairly technical. The audience was varied and ill-defined enough
that the topic guided the tone of the documents more than the actual
audience did. Because I knew that different people were using the
documents for different things, I tried to cover the topics fairly
completely, while sectioning things off and tossing the really dry stuff
into appendices. (This will be even easier on the web.)

For what it's worth, this is bar none my favorite type of project to
work on. It's one of the rare types of "paid for" documentation that
really gives the writer the opportunity to research a topic in detail
and do real two-fisted, bare knuckle technical writing, as opposed to
the mind-numbing, sissified pablum You People wallow in day in and day
out. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

eilrh -at- ei -dot- lucent -dot- com
----------
I have recently been given the task of creating "white papers" for my
company's
products. I have a couple of examples to go by but I have noticed that
they
differ. I was wondering if there was any set standard for creating
these
papers. What exactly are White Papers? What type of information goes
into the
pages? How much? Are they suppose to be more technical than marketing
directed?

Our pages are going out on our web site if that matters at all in
determining
what is in them.

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank-you

Joy Switzer
Tech Writer

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