RE: injecting a little whimsy into grey text

["Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant)" <Madelyn -dot- Boudreaux -at- ge -dot- com>]

Downing, David wrote:
>Humor in technical writing is a tricky subject.
>That said, I have seen small touches done well. 

I'd be nervous to do it, for so many reasons. I figure humor belongs
elsewhere (and I have plenty of other outlets). 

That said, one can be interesting in technical writing, without going
over the line. In a previous position, I had to document search examples
for many varied kinds of academic and industry databases, including
medical, psychological, oil and gas, concrete, religion, math, and art.
My favorite but most onerous task was to create *meaningful* and
workable Boolean searches in these topics (math was hard, to paraphrase
Barbie), and I had to get creative to find examples that would return
results and wouldn't make a user go, "Huh? Why would you search for
THAT?" 

It was a little thing, but it kept me from losing my mind. 

***

Not technical writing, per se, but for a long time, the sample labels on
Avery labels has been Tyler Durden's Paper St. Address. (Documented
here: http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/000612.php) 

- Madelyn
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