Re: Educating the Reader (started off being about the #)

[Beth Agnew <bagnew -at- INSYSTEMS -dot- COM>]

Doug Nickerson wrote: "But this 'knowledge transmission' : Isn't it
dangerously close to
educating the reader? And if you educate the reader beyond what he/she needs
to know to run the machine, aren't you being discriminatory -- using your
own discrimination about what the reader should know? :-) "

I confess. Educating the reader is one of my bad habits. Am I
discriminatory? You bet. But, hey, I'm a maverick. It's my mission in life
to make smarter users. Kinda like panning for gold, wouldn't you say? <vbg>
Quite possibly a futile gesture.

I know we're not writing textbooks, but I find that if I give the users some
context, and a little conceptual information along with the procedural info,
it prepares them to be able to make the cognitive leaps toward solving their
own problems. 

It's a strange kind of reverse food chain: I want eventually to put customer
support out of business, and I want our developers to put me out of
business. 

--Beth

Beth Agnew 
Senior Technical Writer, InSystems Technologies Inc. 
65 Allstate Parkway, Suite 100  Tel: (905) 513-1400 ext. 280 
Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 9X1        Fax: (905) 513-1419 
mailto:bagnew -at- insystems -dot- com    Visit us at: http://www.insystems.com 

See my friendly face at: 
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/bute/52/techwr-l/a.htm

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000