Daniel Emory wrote: > Certainly I don't advocate the use of MIL specs for preparing > commercial manuals. I do know, however, that most tech > writers who produce manuals for commercial products remain > blissfully unaware of the problems caused by their outputs.
A valid point. Although some of us, at least, aren't _blissful_ about it. Resigned, maybe. Sometimes whining and grumbling. <snip> > All I was trying to say is that tech writers in the > non-military world should take advantage of remedial measures > taken by the military to minimize foul-ups. True, when they're applicable. But don't forget the two most important concepts in the technical communications field: (1) It depends. (2) Know your audience. When your audience includes HS grads and GEDs, and they may be under stress, in a hurry, or otherwise highly distracted, and the consequences of a communication failure may be grave -- well, that's a bit different, I suspect, from telling UNIX system administrators how to upgrade the boot server software for their teleconferencing bridges. Software engineers, in particular, are often very literal-minded and Spockian. I've actually had an engineer point to an "Intentionally Blank" page (in another company's manual) and say, "A page is only blank if there's nothing on it." :-) Richard ------ Richard G. Combs Senior Technical Writer Polycom, Inc. richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom 303-223-5111 ------ rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom 303-777-0436 ------
