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Subject:Re: Grammar Q From:Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:09:55 +1100
J Wermont wrote:
>
> But here's another reason for using "will" to talk about things that
> happen as a consequence of the user's actions. It seems, at least
> to my ear, to flow more naturally. Let's say I were talking to someone
> in person, trying to explain how to shift gears in a stick shift car.
> I might say the following:
>
> "Press down on the clutch with your left foot. The gears will disengage
> and you'll be able to shift into the next higher gear. If you don't
> press all the way down on the clutch, though, the gears will grind."
>
> I would not say:
>
> "Press down on the clutch with your left foot. The gears disengage
> and you're able to shift into the next higher gear. If you don't
> press all the way down on the clutch, though, the gears grind."
>
> That sounds so unnatural to me that I think it would be distracting
> to the listener. I'm not talking about tenses anymore, btw - I'm just
> talking about naturalness of speech.
>
> I write technical manuals in a conversational tone. I want the language
> to flow as naturally as conversation. I don't mean that I write in slang,
> as someone else recently said, or using sloppy wording. I just write in
> a style that people normally use in conversation.
>
While I certainly agree that using an informal tone in
writing is better than sounding too formal and corporate,
using a conversational tone does not mean that you should
use the same wording that you'd use in conversation.
When you're instructing someone in person, you can see
what they're doing and you can be there to explain
things and direct them if they're making an error.
There are a lot of other considerations you have to
take into account when writing that you don't have to
worry about in a conversation, too, like page count,
or the possibility that the person you're talking to
might walk away for a while and then come back again
and want to quickly find where he or she was in the
conversation, which is much more difficult if you
write in a paragraph-like conversational way.
Finally, the main purpose of saying things like "The
confirmation dialog box appears" is to let readers know
what should have occurred after they've taken an action.
Future tense should be used in descriptions but in step-
by-step instructions where you are assuming that readers
and doing things in linear order as they're reading,
everything that's happening as they read down is
happening in real time.
-- Janice
*************************************
Janice Gelb janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com
The only connection Sun has with
this message is the return address
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