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Subject:RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 14 May 2001 11:12:33 -0400
Jeff Hanvey wrote:
>
> If I'm putting something together, like a piece of furniture from a kit, I usually just jump in and ignore the instructions, since they're usually worthless anyway (No offense to writers of these - If, indeed, anyone does write them).
I think this, like the rest of the survey responses, goes to "learning styles"; I've hypothesized in this space before that a significant number of people are drawn to tech writing precisely _because_ we like to watch one, do one, teach one--or else we like to just jump in and start twiddling--rather than read about it first (not all of us, of course, just a significant fraction). We'll see if the poll results tend to confirm or negate my hypothesis.
In any case, Jeff, your comments about your approach to assembling things from parts speaks to an approach that is orthogonal to mine. I've only been successful with kits when I spread out the parts, open up the instructions, and start at step 1, being careful to read all the cautions and all the sidebar tips. In fact, I usually try to do these projects (if they involve more than a handful of parts) with a helper, just to double check that I'm doing it right.
I guess you can tell that when I took that battery of vocational aptitude tests in junior high, my mechanical aptitude was, um, unimpressive. It's for dolts like me that they print those instructions, and I'm glad they do!
On the other hand, gimme a graphics program with 4,000 menu commands, and I'll jump off the high board without even looking for water in the pool, let alone unpacking the manual. ;-)
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