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Subject:Re: say please--cultural differences? From:"Jessica N. Lange" <jlange -at- OHIOEE -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 15 Jun 1998 07:39:10 -0400
I worked with a very polite individual who did use "please" in technical
documentation. It bothered me greatly--my position was that the users of our
products were busy, only looked at the documentation in times of need, and
didn't have time for unnecessary words. (My argument persuaded this person
and 'Please push the button' faded from the doc.) I liked Mark L. Levinson's
answer.
However, it seems to me that the 'politeness factor' may be a cultural
thing--that other countries think the direct approach in tech writing is
rude. The Japanese culture in particular is very polite and indirect; I have
read they do not like to say "no."
Does anyone take these cultural differences into account when writing
documentation? Do you try to be more polite, less direct? The tech writing
literature these days always admonishes us to be sensitive of the culture of
our users. OK, I now avoid using any body parts (usually hands) in graphics,
but I can't see changing the *style* of my writing. Seems to me that
regardless of the culture, the user has a job to get done, with deadline
pressures, and usually only looks at the doc to get a fast answer to a
problem. Am I wrong?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Jessica N. Lange jlange -at- ohioee -dot- com
Technical Communicator, Ohio Electronic Engravers, Inc.
-------ORIGINAL MESSAGE-------
Joseph van Oss asked a couple of days ago about when to say
please.
Our policy at Memco is that there is no need to ask the user to
"please" follow our operational instructions. The user is not doing
us a favor by following them. Not following them will only get the
the user in trouble. We would say "please" when asking the user
to do something for our own benefit; for example, "If you have a
comment on our icon art, please contact Memco."
(Incidentally, we also do not congratulate the user on buying
our product and we do not "welcome" the user to it as if it were
a steakhouse.)
--
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- Mark L. Levinson - Memco Ltd. - Wallenberg 24 - 69719 Tel Aviv
- work: mark -at- memco -dot- co -dot- il / tel. +972-3-6450049 / fax +972-3-6450001
- home: nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il / tel. +972-9-9552411 or 9555720
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