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Step One: Take Poetic License With
Technical Writing
At Weber & Associates, They're Out to Make the
Undecipherable Indispensable
By Sandra Evans
Special to The Washington Post
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o Just how would you rewrite this paragraph?
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EXAMPLE ONE
How to log on at a product call center.
BEFORE: Before a call arrives, a call center
agent must be logged on and available to receive that call.
In addition, a supervisor responsible for that agent's
performance is typically logged on. When the supervisor and the agent
sign on, their devices (telephones or PCs) establish a X.25
virtual circuit to the Call Distribution System. This connection
will be in place for the duration of the time the
agent/supervisor is logged on.
When the agent logs on, a data connection to
the corporate host database may also be established.
...
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o Just how would you rewrite this paragraph?
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EXAMPLE TWO
Definition of a municipal lease.
BEFORE: A tax-exempt lease is a financing
transaction which is 1) the lessee is a state or possession of
the U.S., the District of Columbia or a political subdivision thereof;
2) the interest component of lease payments is excludable from
lessor's gross income for federal tax purposes; and 3) "debt"
is not created for state law purposes. It is not intended to
be, nor is it, a true or an operating lease. Though the documents
evidencing such transactions are often labeled "lease-purchase
agreement" or "leases" and employ traditional lease language,
e.g. lessor, lessee, rent, etc., the transaction structure
is a conditional-sales contract or lease-purchase.
...
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¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,
P.A. Gantt
<mailto:pagantt -at- bigfoot -dot- com>
Electronic Media Design and Support
M.S., HRD, The University of Tennessee
