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Arlen.P.Walker writes:
>Chris is right, there is an important TW tie-in over this. But it may not
>be what he thinks.
Chris Gooch wrote:
>Here's another situation which might make my point better; when I was first
>learning to drive, I had trouble with clutch control on hill starts (hill
starts are
>important in Sheffield!).<snip> A year later when I had enough money to
afford a longer
>course of lessons, my new instructor explained the operation of the clutch
pedal in a
>different way --- he explained how a clutch works.
You know, that's weird. I had exactly the same problem with hill starts (I
know Sheffield - my sister lives there - but they're also important in
Edinburgh) and my very first lesson, I got the instructor to explain to me
how clutches work because his instructions didn't make sense to me
otherwise. (He got the idea, and when I was having trouble changing gear, he
explained to me how a gearbox works. <g> That made it easier, too.) Is this
a technical writer "thing", I wonder?
>So, there are times when metaphor and task based or context based
>explanations are not the best ways to explain things. Sometimes it is
>appropriate to say "this is a thing, it works like this, the reason it
works
>like this is because it's made of stuff", rather than "to do a hill start
>depress the accelerator pedal 5cm and the clutch pedal 20cm, release
>the hand brake and gradually pull back your left foot - don't ask why
>it just works".
Then again... I'd say this is an argument for "know your audience". <g> I
can imagine some people who wouldn't *want* to know how a clutch or a
gearbox works - it would just distract them from the process of learning how
to use them by "feel". And this wouldn't make them better or worse drivers -
just people with different learning habits.
My sister prefers not to know what causes a sunset: she says it takes away
from her appreciation of the marvellous colours staining the sky. I find my
appreciation enhanced by additional (and, to me, fascinating) information
about light scattering, the angle of the sun, particles in the air, that our
eyes take in only so much light and only in a certain narrow spectrum and
that we perceive certain wavelengths as certain colours... But we both
appreciate sunsets.
Jane Carnall
Technical Writer, Digital Bridges, Scotland
Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine, and mine alone.
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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