RE: What's the significance of a draft

["Lin Sims" <linda -dot- sims -at- verizon -dot- net>]

On 9 Sep 2002 at 13:46, Anita Legsdin wrote:
 
> In the initial draft, I always insert a comment next to information
> I'm not certain about. Comments are in parentheses, marked as
> "Comment", surrounded by a few asterisks. Then, when I print it out
> and give to the developers, they immediately see my questions and
> (mostly) respond to them. Since I've switched to this practice, I've
> had much more success getting questions answered. I work in Frame, so
> I mark the comment with conditional text ("Comment") so that I can
> either show it, or hide it.

Our company template includes a paragraph tag called AuthorNote, 
which includes numbering (Author's Note 1, Author's Note 2, and so 
on). I've been using it and a conditional tag (AuthorNote) to insert 
questions to SMEs and notes to myself. This keeps the questions and 
notes separated from the "official" text; it also lets me create a List of 
Paragraphs that has all the Author's Notes (neatly numbered) plus 
their page numbers. When I send a PDF out for review, I always 
include that List of Author's Notes.

Doing this has let the SMEs find my questions VERY quickly, AND 
they don't miss them in the text (hey, in the PDF it's in colour, but 
when they print it, B&W is B&W and those paragraphs are easier to 
miss). I'm getting lots more answers, and the SMEs are happy 
because it's easy for them to find the questions, it's easy for them to 
refer to which question they're answering without retyping the whole 
thing, and they know what I still have planned to do so they know I 
haven't forgotten something that needs to be done. Unless I have, of 
course, in which case they'll say "hey, what about this other thing 
here?". 

Of course, these notes ALSO mean they know I'll be hunting for them 
soon, but I think a little bit of a warning makes the chase so much 
more interesting.   ;-)




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