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Re: Another tragic case of not reading the manual

Subject: Re: Another tragic case of not reading the manual
From: joanne grey <j_grey -at- writeangles -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:52:14 -0700

Michele Davis wrote:


I just finished a book, Fast Food America. The entire slaughterhouse industry is full of dangerous jobs such as that. The people performing those jobs in America are ESL and usually don't even read their own language, let alone English, yet they have to ...

Years ago, a construction company paid me to rewrite the manuals supplied by equipment manufacturers. Their workers were primarily non-English speakers and rarely educated beyond past 7th grade. The company management wanted to make sure that ALL of their employees could understand how to use the equipment safely. This came about after some workers wandered onto a hazardous area because they couldn't tell what the warnings said.

The rewrites were quite a lesson for me, too, both in terms of the material and of usability/understanding my audience.


________________________________________
joanne grey j_grey -at- writeangles -dot- com
Principal writer www.writeangles.com

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. -Walter Bagehot






Follow-Ups:

References:
RE: Another tragic case of not reading the manual: From: eric . dunn
Re: Another tragic case of not reading the manual: From: Michele Davis

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