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Re: Procedures - Must we use numbered steps?

Subject: Re: Procedures - Must we use numbered steps?
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:09:26 -0400

Cookbooks are indeed a fine example of a certain
style of technical writing. Even the earlier ones
(like my grandmother's 1905 Fannie Farmer) already
have a good pattern. Miss Farmer was scientific in
her approach to cooking, and taught the use of
level measurements at her famous Boston Cooking
School.

It is certainly worth noting how well cookbooks deal
with multitasking, which is actually difficult to
describe in numbered steps and is better handled
by making use of the cook's judgment. "May be
prepared a day in advance," or (for a souffle),
"Serve immediately."

Indexes in cookbooks seem to range from the merely
adequate to the superb, and I recommend them as a
model for would-be indexers. My favorite is Rombauer
& Becker, circa 1975.


Steven Brown wrote:

We spend a great deal of time formatting numbered
procedures and the numbered substeps that are often
embedded within them. (How many times have we
struggled with Word's autonumbering?) It's become an
accepted practice that when you write a procedure, you
use numbers to show the sequence of steps.

But I wonder, is it really necessary to use numbered
steps at all? Gordon Meyer's Usable Help blog
(http://www.g2meyer.com/usablehelp/index.html)
recently discussed what techncial writers might learn
from recipe writers. While he doesn't raise the issue
of numbered steps, it struck me that recipes rarely
use numbered steps at all, yet somehow cookbook
readers are able to follow a fairly complex sequence
of tasks.

So I ask, have you ever considered writing procedures
without numbers?
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References:
Procedures - Must we use numbered steps?: From: Steven Brown

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