Re: List for bad writing examples

["David Loveless" <daveloveless -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Off topic slightly, but I was once presented with a document for
editing. It was describing basic office processes and, in particular,
how to take meeting minutes.

One of the necessary elements for a "successful" meeting was, and I
quote, "One (1) word processing support specialist to record and
process the audio information." I crossed that out and replaced it
with "transcriptionist."

And they say that technical writers have no value.

It's a Monday, but man does it feel like and need to be a Friday.

Dave

On 2/27/06, Susan W. Gallagher <sgallagher5 -at- cox -dot- net> wrote:
> I think what you're looking for is the Worst Technical
> Writing contest sponsored by Technical Standards, a TW
> staffing company in Escondido, CA. Yes, they still hold the
> contest every year. For more info and to view prior years'
> winners, go to:
>
> http://www.tecstandards.com/contest.htm
>
> There was another contest, this one held by CoreCOMM, a doc
> company in Texas. Attempts to access their website are now
> redirected, so I guess they're no longer there. I won their
> first contest <g> and you can see the announcement here:
>
> http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9602/techwhirl-9602-00304.html
>
> Curiously enough, that sentence I grabbed from programmer
> docs that I was rewriting has developed a life of its own,
> and serves as a bad example wherever it goes. "Type the
> field name Name in the Field Name field" was once just a
> snip of text in a Smalltalk developer guide. It now garners
> a whopping 189 hits on Google, each and every one of them
> an article about bad documentation.
>
> HTH!
> -Sue Gallagher
>
> >
> > From: "Suzette Leeming" <suzette -dot- leeming -at- gmail -dot- com>
> > Date: 2006/02/27 Mon PM 03:18:26 EST
> > To: TECHWR-L <TECHWR-L -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> > Subject: List for bad writing examples
> >
> > My memory is a bit foggy (one of the side effects of aging), but once upon a
> > time there was a repository for examples of bad technical writing.
> >
> > Does anyone know if this still exists?
> >
> >
>
>
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