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Subject:Re: Are manuals and help read? From:Brad Mehlenbacher <brad_m -at- UNITY -dot- NCSU -dot- EDU> Date:Thu, 17 Mar 1994 11:31:42 -0500
I think it's a critical and useful position to take, that is, assuming
that users view reading a manual as a failure.... As Redish, Battison,
and Gold (1985) have pointed out:
'If ... owners read the [manual] at all, they are likely to skim through
it when they first get it. After that, they will probably only go back to
it when they need a specific piece of information. That's how people use
manuals' (p. 134).
Manuals have hostile, impatient, frustrated, irritated, critical, angry
audiences. Talk about a rhetorical challenge for writers!
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