Re: Front and Back matter in User Guides (where do you put the company contact info)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Caroline Tabach wondered: <<All of our User Guides (and other  
documents)  contain the contact info (addresses, phone numbers,  
emails) of our offices at the beginning of the book beneath copyright  
info. The contact info also appears on the page that would have been  
the back cover (if we were printing). Someone looking through one of  
these books (who is neither a writer nor an English speaker), told us  
this information should not appear in the beginning of the books and  
asked why it was there.>>

It's there because that's the conventional location for this  
information. Please note: I'm not the kind of person who says "do it  
because it's always been done that way". Far from it. But sometimes  
there's a good reason not to mess about with tradition. Here, the  
reason is that people have learned to look there. Always rely on  
learned skills when you can; saves having to teach people new ones.

In addition, putting all this information at the front of the book  
makes it easy to find. Even if you could come up with a more logical  
location, it's easier to find this information by flipping a couple  
pages than by flipping to some arbitrary page deep in the book.


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
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