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Subject:Re: Testing your reviewers From:"Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 10 Jan 1997 09:56:53 -0800
At 09:13 AM 1/10/97 -0800, Gail Taylor wrote:
>Years ago, when I worked at Control Data, some incorrect cabling instruction
>made it through two review cycles before the engineer noticed. Pretty scary.
>
>I decided that the nice formatting definitely got in the way of tehcnical
>reviews, and contemplated producing tech-review drafts using a much plainer
>format - not wrapping anything much in paragraphs.
>
How did you come to this conclusion? Back in the Neolithic Era of
publications when Courier type on a letter quality printer was barely on its
way out, we found that drafts in our new DTP format got *closer* scrutiny
from our reviewers because they were easier to read and seemed "official"
because they appeared to be ready to go to the printer. Reviewers seemed to
think that this was their last chance to catch errors and they focused their
attention accordingly. Back then typography had some novelty value; today
reviewers may be more blase.
--Wayne Douglass
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