TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> From: J. Fraser [mailto:tekwrite -at- ISTAR -dot- CA]
>
> Flame me if you must. I know this has been discussed,
> but I can't get into the archives and I'd like some
> quick answers:
>
> For those of you who do online reviews and edits,
> how do you do them? e.g., do people type comments, etc.
> directly into a copy of your document? do you submit
> a pdf document for them to annotate, or what?
Good question. I don't have a definitive answer, but I do have some experience.
I've tried using the Routing Slip feature of Word to review documents. That feature sends copies of the document via email to all the reviewers. When they are done editing the document, they email it back, and Word merges the changes. The document shows all the changes: deletions are crossed off, insertions underlined, and the changes are color coded to indicate who did it. There is a final step where Word searches the resulting document for changes, and I click "Accept" or "Reject" for each one.
Seems like a cool feature, but it seems to encourage nit-picky changes, particularly from semi-literate engineers. People who have interesting theories about the use of the passive voice, the placement of commas, and the spelling and capitalization of our own trademark terms. I've had reviews where one engineer inserted extra spaces and another removed extra spaces: I use search and replace to clean up spacing at the end of the process. And then I have to go through and hit "Reject" many, many times, worrying about insulting someone who went to such great lengths to review my work. More importantly, the reviewers seem to miss problems with the content - the whole point of the review.
But I've had much better results distributing documents in PDF. We don't use the software that allows annotations. Some reviewers prefer to print out copies and mark them up, others send me email detailing their comments. Either way, I find the comments much more likely to have substance. I often respond to those reviews point by point - a simple "done", an explanation of why I didn't make a change, or an elaboration on how the comment helped my. Email is a little more convenient for me to respond to, marked up paper a tiny bit easier to apply to my document.
The style of review is very different. Making comments on paper or an email seems to make it easier for the reviewer to focus on the facts being presented.
Most of the reviews I've done in my career have been on paper. PDF is more convenient for me - I email a pointer to the server or intranet where I have placed the document and that's it.
The method I liked best was when the tech comm group had a person who typed in all the changes for us. She would print out the review copies, hound the reviewers mercilessly, and type the reasonable changes (using change tracking, so we could accept or reject each change) into the document, noting any grammar problems (extremely literate person) and places where we were unclear (very smart but not an expert on our subject matter). Alas, Kat has gone on to better things and we couldn't replace her even if the company was willing to pay her replacement's salary.
---
Office:
mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com
Home:
nax -at- execpc -dot- com
