Humor -- or tone?

[Patty Ewy <pewy -at- MIDCOM-INC -dot- COM>]

OK, I admit that I have a pretty low-brow sense of humor.  (Prolly a
pretty low-brow sense of *everything,* truth be told.)

I don't know if there is room for humor in technical communication--but
that is largely because I think of humor as communication intended to get
a giggle or a chortle--not usually the goal of most of the manuals/help
files/etc that most of us create to pay our bills.  But what I do like to
see in technical communication is a lighter *tone*.

Example:  Until recently I was writing manuals for a software company
that developed software for manufacturing companies.  This was a massive
software system, covering everything from purchase orders to
manufacturing orders and sales orders and MRP and ---well, it was big.
And boooorrrring.  So when it came time to create a set of sample data
and write examples that the users could use, I lobbied for creating a toy
company.  We wrote examples that listed the parts for the little red
wagons that our pseudo-company built, we wrote examples about building
bicycles, dolls--all kinds of toys.  I think those examples helped
lighten the subject and make some fairly difficult concepts a little
easier to grasp.

I think it is the same with the Dummies books:  in the HTML for Dummies
book, for example, cats are the subject of the web site that they're
creating.  I don't think of that as "humor" (I don't bust a gut thinking
of ol' Winston and what's-his-name) but I do think their careful choice
of a *light* topic for their example web site was important.  If their
example would've been "geographical anomolies and their effect on the
climate of eastern South Dakota" or something equally stunning, I
would've rolled my eyes and tossed the book over my shoulder.

My two cents.





Patty Ewy
Marketing Communications
pewy -at- midcom-inc -dot- com
http://www.midcom-inc.com