RE: Department of Redundancy Department

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Sam Beard wrote: 
 
>    I'm revising a manual from before my time here, making some fairly
> minor edits. However, I ALWAYS review the manuals I'm revising here,
> reading them word for word, and I usually, if not always, catch some
> sort of error that wasn't in the set of redlines handed to me. Take
this
> gem, for example:
> 
> 
> 
> Plug the external desktop power supply cord of the voltage-specific
> external desk-top power supply supplied with the autosampler into the
> power connector located on the autosampler back panel.
> 
>    Now, this was step 1 of a four step process on plugging in an
> autosampler and connecting it to the main unit, in a section called
> Establishing External Connections. Right before this was a Warning and
a
> Caution about using the supplied power supply. While not technically
an
> error, isn't this a WONDERFUL example of technical writing?!

Jeez, I hate that kind of crap. Here's something I posted a little over
a year ago that's relevant: 

Stuart Burnfield wrote: 
 
> If you're pretending to be a clueless idiot, it's hard to avoid 
> overwriting and overexplaining. You'll be tailoring the docs to make 
> them more usable by a handful of users, at the expense of the 
> overwhelming majority of users. (I'm assuming you haven't identified 
> clueless idiots as a significant segment of your target audience :^)

Hear, hear. Mark Baker, who I believe was a regular contributer to this
list (or was it FrameUsers?) a while back, posited "Baker's Paradox,"
which I formatted nicely with a border and big letters, and posted
prominently in my cube as a reminder:

"Any procedure that anticipates every possible misunderstanding will be
incomprehensible to all users."

 
Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------





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