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Subject:re: User Guide - a newbie mistake? From:rbilbao -at- us -dot- amadeus -dot- net To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Sep 2002 15:53:42 -0400
Thanks for helping out a panicky newbie. All of you agreed that covering 100% of
everything isn't necessarily a good thing, much to my relief. Here are some of
the golden nuggets of advice I munched on:
- Nobody ever covers "absolutely every aspect of the software" and we call our
documentation alot of things...sometimes we call it a User Guide. - John Posada
- If they [reviewers] haven't found any [errors], reread it yourself in two days
time. Starting
from the back..... - Sean O'Donoghue-Hayes
- Sometimes telling the user absolutely everything is overkill. It can make a
document so unwieldy that is becomes unusable. - Cindy Kight
- By just putting in the important information that will be adequate for the
majority
of your users, your making your book more usable, more readable, and a lot
less heavy. ;) - Katie Kearns
- I'd be more worried about whether you included all the information you need,
rather
then fretting over its title. - Sean Hower
- If it is written for the end-users of the software (or hardware, or widget,
or tennis shoe, etc), and it guides them on how to use the product, I would
call it a User Guide. - Kevin Cheek
RE: I'm almost done with my first document. It's 20 pages long. I called it
a user guide and sent it for review. Then I realize, I didn't really cover
absolutely every aspect of the software. I covered about 75%. The important 75%.
Is it okay to have called it a user guide? Is there a rule that says when
calling a document a user guide it has to cover 100% of everything? Or does it
depend on what the company/team/department has deemed "user guide" for
consistency?
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