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>You are glancing through another company?s manual.
>You read the following sentence:
> Our Company is interested in the applications
> you develop with our products, and we want to
> help if you have problems with them.
>It?s a nicely written sentence, says everything it
>needs to, and you were just about to work on the
>Customer Support section of your manual.
>Can you/would you use this sentence? Is there a
>legal element to copyright and a moral one for
>plagiarize? Would either of these obligate us
>to twist and turn it around so it's our own creation,
>even if that means it's not as pleasing a sentence?
I think the issue here is whether professional
technical communicators need to borrow wording from
other manuals in order to write their own. The example
you used could easily be rewritten to make the same point.
" We will help you if you have any problems developing
applications with our products."
If writer's block is the problem, then use this technique: Picture
a typical user in your mind and write down what you would say
to that person. Or find a real person and do the same. Have him
read what you've written and tell you what he thinks it means.
Audrey Choden
Training by Design
5011 West 66th Street
Prairie Village, KS 66208
(Kansas City)
(913) 432-7414
fax: (913) 432-8744
achoden -at- compuserve -dot- com
"Custom course development"
"Search and retrieval of business and
technical course content"
