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Re: Friday Poll Idea (WAS: In love with a word)

Subject: Re: Friday Poll Idea (WAS: In love with a word)
From: Amy Gale <amyg -at- grammatech -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 14:47:16 -0500

Cathy MacDonald wrote:

A particular word appears in every manual written by certain arrogant,
soi-disant writers who believe that there's really no sense in trying to
explain things to a user (they're much too dim to understand them anyway).
That word is straightforward. I mean the word is "STRAIGHTFORWARD." I will
never use that word in polite company.

It's used by complacent slackers who just can't muster the strength to write
a few procedural steps or describe a process flow. The first sentence in
the slacker's manual is often: "The disassembly of the Gizmometer is fairly
straightforward."

I sometimes use sentences with that kind of flavor as a preamble to the procedural steps: sometimes it just seems like the task requires some kind of reassurance. Is that a bad idea?

Amy the suddenly worried
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Re: Friday Poll Idea (WAS: In love with a word): From: Cathy MacDonald

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