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Subject:Apology From:"Diane Brennan (Write Stuff)" <a-dianeb -at- MICROSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 18 Jun 1998 14:32:37 -0700
I wish I could yank back my last post! But since I can't, I'd like to
apologize to Tony Markatos. I agree with Tony that some technical
documentation is missing important information that the user needs. When I
was younger, I had to use technical manuals when I was fixing radar problems
on F-16's. Since some of the procedures took as long as five hours, we
ended up reading the steps every time we performed certain tasks. You would
be surprised how many times we would find a procedure that said something
like "toggle the button on" without saying how you were supposed to know
which position was the "on" position. It's very important that a writer can
analyze and address the user's needs. My point was that when writing
follows grammatical rules, the reader can focus on the information, not the
writing.
