Re: Chapter summaries at start of doc: yes/no?

[Rebecca Stevenson <rjstevenson -at- sprynet -dot- com>]

My use of such summaries depends on the context. Some products are designed in such a way that it's very difficult to convey full information -- at least to a novice user -- in the headers, in which case I feel it can help to explain what the heck is going on (briefly) at the beginning. Other products have a very strong workflow, such that I like to provide a "roadmap" early in the documentation, where each chapter may represent a portion of a larger process, and having the summary can provide more context.

Most of the time, however, I do not use them.

Rebecca

-----Original Message-----
>From: Sarah Bouchier <Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com>
>Sent: Oct 24, 2006 10:31 AM
>To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>Subject: Chapter summaries at start of doc: yes/no?
>
>In the last couple of companies I've worked for, the documentation
>template called for a summary, at the start of the document, of what was
>in each chapter.  I'm contemplating getting rid of these, for the
>following reasons:
>
>1. The Table of Contents should be sufficient to tell you what's in a
>chapter.  If it's not succeeding, you need to reconsider your headings.
>
>2. Ditto the index.
>
>3. Nobody ever remembers to update the summary.
>
>However, if my logic were really that overwhelmingly obvious and
>correct, nobody would be using start-of-document summaries.  So... what
>am I missing?

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