Laura Lemay was my student!

[Karen Schriver <ks0e+ -at- ANDREW -dot- CMU -dot- EDU>]

Hey I know Famous Tech Writers, and Laura Lemay is one.

She was in my class several years ago. In fact, I didn't even know she
had written a book on HTML until I was a visiting prof at the University
of Utrecht in Holland. There someone showed me her book and I said "Let
me see that again; I had a Laura Lemay in my "Planning and Testing
Documents" class at Carnegie Mellon Univ. years ago and I don't know if
it's really the Laura I know." Then I looked inside where she describes
herself, her penchant for motorcycles and drinking Coke. I said "that's
Laura, she always needed two chairs in class, one for her and one for
her motorcycle helmet." She was a great student and I (we) are very
proud of her marvelous adventures!!

Karen Schriver

P.S. Thanks much to all who wrote to me about the BYTE magazine review
of my book and for telling me that Publish magazine chose my book on
document design as one of their "pics of the month" for April.

P.S.S. Those of you looking for guidelines about typography and online
documentation, I have researched this topic from 1900 to 1996 and have
compiled a rather extensive list of research-based guidelines in
Appendix C of my book, pp. 506-517. George Hayhoe is absolutely correct;
the literature is fragmented and many more studies need to be done. But
there is ample research that I was able to find that supports specific
choices for typography online. Moreover, I've found empirical evidence
that anyone who plans, writes, or edits online really should have a 21"
monitor because if you don't, the likelihood of missing errors and being
unable to revise for organization increases dramatically. There are
clear cognitive advantages to having 21" monitors and "seeing the text"
is NOT a trivial issue. Research shows reading online takes 20 to 40%
longer than reading on paper. Writers and editors experience more eye
fatique editing online. Writers and editors miss errors they would other
catch when editing online, but interestingly, the differences almost go
away when writers and editors use 21" monitors. That is, writers and
editors are almost as good as they are when using hardcopy if they use a
big monitor. The bottom line is that any manager who argues against
buying 21" monitors is crazy!! They are throwing money out the window by
paying people extra for revising, editing, and support costs that deal
with those errors people miss. I consulted for one large government body
that insisted all editing be done on their old fashioned 13" monitors
with black background and white letters (argh!!). They didn't want
editors to print out their texts for editing because "it wasted paper!"
What a dumb idea!!!

 TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot-  Send commands
   to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
  Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/  or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html