A philosophical tech writing question?

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

David Downing wondered: <<Is in truly possible to remove yourself  
completely from what you write. Even when it's completely cut and dry  
on the surface, and you've deliberately tried to make it so, is it  
still going to have SOME trace of your character, personality, etc.  
in it?>>

The answer isn't at all cut and dried. At one extreme ("Open the File  
menu and select Print"), the answer is obvious: there is no  
personality whatsoever in such statements, and it's hard to imagine  
how even a forensic linguist <g> could tell whether you or I wrote  
the sentence. At the other extreme (descriptions of user-interface  
metaphors, providing overall context for procedures, deciding on a  
density for index terms and cross-references), there is clearly  
considerable personality that remains in the writing, in terms of  
overall approach, sentence-level style, and content choices.

This is even more dramatic when we go beyond software documentation.  
For example, I work primarily as an editor for non-English authors  
who are writing in their second language or a different dialect of  
that language so they can publish in English journals. Despite the  
rigid (one might even say "anal-retentive") style imposed on science  
journal articles, there are clear rhetorical differences between  
cultures (e.g., Chinese vs. Japanese vs. Indian), and distinct  
differences between authors even within a culture. For example, I can  
recognize the distinctive styles of some of my more frequent authors  
in a "blind taste test" <g>, with their names stripped from the  
manuscript.

So your answer is "maybe": The more scope the author has to diverge  
from a rigid and stereotyped description, the more personality  
remains in the writing. That's a good thing, imho, so long as the  
essential content is provided.

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
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www.geoff-hart.com
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