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I start each new section with two basic segments/paragraphs/chunks/whatever:
What it's for (which covers what is it and what does it do) and How you use
it. I pretty much cover the golden list in the course of answering those.
Whatever works.
I'm just surprised so many people saw this as a revelation.
Maggie Secara
NILS Publishing Company
(818) 734-3570
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ccallen -at- beckman -dot- com [mailto:ccallen -at- beckman -dot- com]
> Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 2:37 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Benchmarking Technical Documentation
>
>
> Wade (and several others) seem to believe Andrew's five questions are,
> indeed, golden.
> >I made mine into a power point and put it on my wall
> > Andrew Plato wrote:
> > [snipped]
> > When documenting something, you must answer the five golden
> questions:
<snipped further to make Lyris happy>
> > [end snip]
The first three (and maybe the fifth) are relevant, but can easily be
covered in a few paragraphs in the intro or description
section. How it works is seldom of interest to the user (do I care how my
telephone or VCR works? no). But the most important question isn't even
mentioned--HOW DO I USE IT? That's what user's really, really need to know.
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