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Re: How much do people need to be told in documentation.

Subject: Re: How much do people need to be told in documentation.
From: Amy Hendrix <amych -at- mindspring -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 11:16:15 -0400

At 07:37 AM 9/17/2001 -0700, you wrote:

"Do you really think that with people knowing what they know, that we
need to use a full paragraph explaining to them what an email address
looks like? As most people know by now, I usualy assume very little
in a document, but I think explaining that an email address contains
an @ sign, a period after the @ sign, etc. may be overkill."

I think it really depends on your users. I can tell you from my own experience of collecting emails without any kind of error-checking, that I see a *hell* of a lot of people giving userids only.

I do think your developer's long paragraph can be cut considerably, and this might increase the chance that your users making it through the instructions without their eyes glazing over. Something like: "email addresses should be of the form 'jdoe -at- foobar -dot- com'; 'jdoe' alone will not work." covers the information the developer wants conveyed without wasting too much space or annoying anyone to death.


Amy Hendrix - Durham, NC
DO NOTHING, UNSUCCESSFULLY


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References:
How much do people need to be told in documentation.: From: John Posada

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