Re: Formatting Freak - long

Subject: Re: Formatting Freak - long
From: wallace stokes <eirdr -at- HOTMAIL -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:05:27 PDT

Dianne Blake wrote:

Am I the only one out there that gets in trouble when they receive
documents that are screaming for reformatting and clean-up (tosomething
more readable, something more aesthetically pleasing)?

It seems that we suffer from the same disease. I have never quite figured
out how people just start writing without some idea of how the document
should flow and how it should appear. Yet it happens all the time and I'm
able to earn a pretty good living cleaning up their messes. I guess we
shouldn't complain. In this age of specialization, perhaps we have found a
comfortable niche. Enjoy. :-)

From: Dianne Blake <write-it -at- HOME -dot- COM>
Reply-To: Dianne Blake <write-it -at- HOME -dot- COM>
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Formatting Freak - long
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 20:17:23 -0700

Am I the only one out there that gets in trouble when they receive
documents that are screaming for reformatting and clean-up (to something
more readable, something more aesthetically pleasing)?

I've been a technical writer since the 1970s and have been writing
technical training materials since the late 1980s. I've been a
programmer, a project manager, a consultant, and have enjoyed a short
career in the document management arena.

With all this background I find I still love document formatting and
clean-up the most (I fell in love with it during my two years on a
document design project in WordPerfect).

My initial reaction is to quickly skim through the document for content
(is it worth the time to clean-up). Then I feel compelled to clean-up
the document as I read it again. I just have a serious difficulty
reading it when I stumble upon readability issues. What is more - the
worse it is the more inclined I am to massage the material, format the
headings, insert headers and footers, clean-up the spelling, etc.

Even when I am writing from scratch, I just can't sit at a blank piece
of paper for very long. I have to work with a style guide. If one
doesn't exist, I can sit for hours designing just the right styles,
fonts, and page layout. Once this is done, I can write for hours and
hours on end without annoying formatting distractions.

Creating the style guide usually gets my creative juices going so well
that I've written as many as 3 chapters in a day after a bout of
formatting.

Maybe I am missing my calling. Does anyone know of a venue that is in
serious need of formatting freaks? Or, maybe I just needs a good
psychiatrist.

-Dianne Blake
write-it -at- home -dot- com


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