TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Christine quickly concluded that no measurement of documents is valid,
because they can all be perverted. I think the formal solution to this
problem is named multidimensional testing or something, but the
informal solution is: you're kidding, right?
I don't mean at all to pick on Christine; other people have taken this
line of argument here. Frankly, it does not exist in the real world,
because other constraints, usually in the form of a supervisor, resolve
the apparent paradox. To wit:
* A parent will punish the child even if he never admits that he took
the electric shaver to the cat.
* A judge will not allow the witness to answer exclusively with "Will
you repeat the question, please?"
* The development manager will not allow the engineer to check in
500,000 lines of comments without any compilable statements.
* The writing manager will not accept 300 one-page manuals in lieu of
one 300-page manual.
Without supervision, I admit that perversity can take root. For a
while, Enron got away with swapping electricity with other suppliers
and calling it sales. (At the end, they didn't even bother transmitting
the power back and forth--they just called it a deal.) But such cases
are pathological. If anyone is paying attention, the desired results
can be obtained, and measured.
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or download a trial at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l4
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
