Re: Teaching a practical business writing class and looking for professional rubrics

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:

> Yes, obviously our output has to please the boss and do what he wants it to
> do. But on the other hand...
>
> I can't speak for anyone else on the board, but I contend that "creativity"
> is not a bad thing; at least, not when done right. When I have used that
> word in previous arguments this board has seen on this point, I meant
> finding ways to write things, to lay out pages, so that the end result was
> not full of tedious repetition that annoyed the reader.
>
> One of the most commonly heard complaints about tech docs is, they are hard
> to read because they are so boring. Many have content that is so repetitive
> it is mind-numbing. Too many are full of pages that look exactly the same
> except for the difference of a few words. They keep using the *exact* same
> phrases over and over until the reader is sick of seeing them. You can
> actually make documents painful to read with excessive consistency.
>

A case-in-point is the book *HTML, XHTML and CSS (Visual Quick-Start Guide),
*by Rob Huddleston uses the exact wording for every CSS command, and in
about 5 cases, didn't  bother to update the text from the previous command,
so that the text didn't even apply to the section. It was very disappointing
to see that in an expensive published book.

-Wendy
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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