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On Sun, 7 Apr 2002 13:15:22 -0500, "Ed" <miraclewhip00 -at- hotmail -dot- com> asked:
>... Does anyone have any insight into why there is so little
>info on how to write white papers? ...why the silence? White papers are neither that hard to define nor and they so easy as to be safely ignored.
And, at Sun, 7 Apr 2002 18:18:20 -0700 (PDT), Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com> ventured:
>... I suspect you'll get several different reasons for why there is very little on White Papers in the technical documentation literature. My experience is that we're seldom asked to write them. Most technical writers write Installation Guides, User Guides, Reference Guides, Parts Manuals, Online Help, Web pages and whole sites, Assembly Instructions, Operations Instructions, and doubtless others that don't come to mind right away.
>
>I've been asked to write many things, but never a White Paper.
My experience is the opposite of Tom's. Even when I've been hired to write highly technical API documentation, I am almost always asked to write one or more white papers as well.
My theory about why this happens is that usually white papers are written by sales/marketing types. But for topics that are so technical that the sales/marketing types know they can't get them right (or, when the engineers realize that sales/marketing won't be able to), they call me in and have me take a stab at it.
Understandably, then, the writing of the white paper often becomes a much higher priority than the writing of the API docs so I get to write the white paper first, before the API docs are completed. It's a GREAT way to prove to engineers that not only do you understand what they are telling you, but that you ALSO can explain the topic to someone who lacks the same great genius and vast programming experience as the engineers.
Assuming you have buy-in from both engineering and sales/marketing, the writing of a white paper takes a much shorter time than the writing of the rest of the documentation.
I do use a fairly standard outline for my white papers -- for example, I nearly always start with an Overview, taking care to explain why this thing/concept/piece of hardware is useful and by whom, etc. But since the topics usually vary so widely, I don't have just one template or outline that would be recognizable across white papers.
Hmmm. Looks like the whitepapers I've written that I thought were still on the Web are not accessible right at the moment. Sigh.
--Emily
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~ Emily Berk ~
On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc. ~
~ Project management, developer relations and ~
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~
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