Re: Credibility (WAS: Texts on Grammar)

[Deborah Ray <debray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

At 01:18 PM 8/25/98 -0700, George's dazzling response was:

>The well-written documents that accurately reflect the reality of the
>product, process or service are always dazzling because the subject
>matter is accurately relayed to the reader.

Okay. Now you've changed your tune. You first said,

>When you know what you're writing about and can quote chapter and verse
>from the so-called "industry bible", defending your work is easy.
>Dazzle with knowledge as well as brilliance.

From this, I gather that you think we should dazzle by quoting chapter
and verse from the "industry bible" in the context of defending
your work. That is what you said, isn't it? But including your
own "knowledge and brilliance" in a document really has nothing to
do with creating a well-written document that meets the audience's
needs; you include information according to what the audience needs
to know. Your first and second comments (the two quoted above) don't
seem to support each other.

>Most readers tend to
>appreciate a manual or user guide that gives them the answers they're
>looking for.

Absolutely! But that's not dazzling them; it's giving them
the information that they need to complete a task (or otherwise
achieve what they set out to do). I think Jason said it well
when he referred to "delighting" readers. Delighting seems to
have a much more reader-focused connotation that "dazzle" in
the sense you used it in your original quote.

>In that respect, we TWs are very much in the business of
>dazzling the readers,

Nope, I'm still not in the business of dazzling readers. I'm
in the business of giving *readers* knowledge...not inflicting my
information or "brilliance" on them. I don't set out to write dazzling
documents; I set out to write documents that help readers achieve
their goals. The results readers achieve, though, might be
dazzling, depending on what they set out to do.

>
>Remember, the product is only as good as its manual.  What good is the
>product if you can't figure out how to use it properly by reading the
>documentation?  Good TWs know how to communicate with their SMEs and
>vice versa.  What's published as a result of that interchange -- and
>what's finally agreed upon in-house -- is not what I call drivel.

I didn't say that the communication exchange was drivel. Reread
my comment, which said,

>> Similarly, I'm far more interested in communicating with
>> them in order to get the information I need, rather than
>> impressing them with a bunch of meaningless-to-them drivel.

Clear communication does *not* generally result from one
party "dazzling with knowledge as well as brilliance," as you
stated earlier. Clear communication results from each party
providing and receiving necessary information, among other
things, but certainly not from attempts to dazzle.

Always a pleasure, George,
Deborah

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