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RE: Proof that content is more important than style
Subject:RE: Proof that content is more important than style From:"David Downing" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 22 Nov 2002 13:35:23 -0500
I'm coming in on this a bit belatedly, because I want to make a point
that's been on my mind for awhile now -- with respect to this
long-running debate, and several other long-running debates, such as the
"Is it more important to write well, or more important to have a god
technical knowledge of the material" debate. It seems like folks are
going back and forth between two extreme positions, when the truth is
probably somewhere in the middle. In the present case, yes a document
needs to be accurate and informative, but at the same time, care should
be taken, wherever possible, t make it visually palatable. Agreed, if I
spend all day making a document look nice, but fail to tell the end user
what I was supposed to tell him/her, I have failed. But on the other
hand, how many accurate, informative documents go unused because they're
so ugly that no one can stand to look at them?
(BTW, I've heard that those "Contest Rules" written with no margins, in
2-point sans-serif type, are written that way on purpose -- so that
people won't read them, and will thus break the rules because of
ignorance. That way, the sponsor of the contest can get out of paying
the prize money to a potential winner who turns out to be disqualified
because he/she accidentally broke the rules that he/she didn't bother to
read.)
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