Re: Is it just me...?

[Danna McLaughlin <mclaughlin -at- HOU -dot- SPERRY-SUN -dot- COM>]

I think most writers feel that uncontrollable urge to line-edit from time to
time, especially when errors start popping up in commercial documents that are
supposed to be "done."
On the job, this urge can backfire. It's easy to start polishing the grammar or
wording in a paragraph, only to find that the subject matter is outdated or
wrong, or that the whole paragraph is unnecessary and just needs to be axed.
Occasionally even the SMEs will start adding commas and forget to provide the
facts. (I think this came up earlier on the list.) I'm tring to establish a
"levels of edit" protocol in my department for that very reason. Line by line
editing should occur at the final stages of a document to save time and
aggravation.

Danna McLaughlin (My opinion, not my employer's)
McLaughlin -at- Hou -dot- sperry-sun -dot- com
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Is it just me...?
Author:  The Tech Writer <techwrtr -at- CRL -dot- COM> at Internet-Mail
Date:    5/23/95 1:25 AM


I'm reading some documentation for the new programming language I just
bought, and am finding that I can barely keep from reaching for the red
pen--the problems in the writing are small (extra commas in weird
places), but I find that they're hard to pass up. I'm a new graduate of
the technical writing program at SFSU, so I'm wondering if this urge ever
goes away?

David Castro
techwrtr -at- crl -dot- com
dcastro -at- hpsrdas -dot- sr -dot- hp -dot- com
http://www.crl.com/~techwrtr/index.html